Well that was fun (first redplate tube experience)

DankStar

Her Little Mojo Minion
So I thought I was doing my mesa subway rocket a favor by buying a brand new matched set of EL84s. Popped them in and it sounded weird. Looked at the tubes and one was glowing red like a baboon’s arse and smelled like burnt pubes. Turned it off and now it’s gotta go to my tech.

My guess is the previous owner (of course the guy I bought it from only obtained it in a trade or something) changed the factory bias to some other thing to meet his needs and of course didn’t tell anyone or put a note inside the amp. Either that or one of the brand new tubes was bad.

I’ll find out and report back but I swear if I buy another amp it’s going to be a Quilter. Eff tubes! Nothing but headaches and trips to a tech. For dang sure not buying someone else’s used tube POS. I should have just bought the stupid Bugera 22 watt head when it was on sale for $325. I’d be playing it now (and it had the infinium feature, literally would take any set of tubes).
 
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did you buy the mesa spec set? which brand?

quilter is fine, but ill stick with my current hoard of tone
 
did you buy the mesa spec set? which brand?

quilter is fine, but ill stick with my current hoard of tone

I got a matched set of Mesa EL84s from sweet water. I think the rocket was listed in the list of amps but hopefully I didn’t buy the wrong ones.
 
it can last a very long time, but itll need some love from time to time

Yep. My '72 Quad Reverb, on the other hand, was gigged very hard and abused. That amp has been in the shop once in all of its years and still sounds great. I don't think it is tubes vs. solid state; I think a lot of it is the luck of the draw combined with dumb luck. My guess is my Fender was not built on a Monday morning or Friday afternoon and has never seen a power surge. Dumb luck.
 
old handwired amps tend to be a bit more resilient due to the build, but a pc board (tube or ss) can be very reliable too.
 
My Traynor hasn't needed any TLC since I bought it, 15+ years ago. That amp is older than me and has been dragged everywhere and played through a bunch of different cabs with various degrees of impedance mismatch. Fingers crossed it keeps ticking for a while yet.

The VHT is way more finicky and has needed 3 retubes and a replacement transformer over roughly the same time period, including a glowing-baboon-anus power tube event just a couple months ago, but it's got my favorite distorted guitar tone and it's not going anywhere. It's worth the hassle.
 
My Traynor hasn't needed any TLC since I bought it, 15+ years ago. That amp is older than me and has been dragged everywhere and played through a bunch of different cabs with various degrees of impedance mismatch. Fingers crossed it keeps ticking for a while yet.

The VHT is way more finicky and has needed 3 retubes and a replacement transformer over roughly the same time period, including a glowing-baboon-anus power tube event just a couple months ago, but it's got my favorite distorted guitar tone and it's not going anywhere. It's worth the hassle.

Thanks for that - reminds me I do love the tone of the mesa and should be worth the fix
 
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I have no idea what just happened but I took my amp to a guy today and all he really did was remove a silly power outlet thing from my mesa and spray some contact cleaner on the tube sockets. When we plugged in, it seemed to work fine. Not complaining! But it's weird.

The only other thing he was thinking was that when I hooked up the extension speaker maybe something was messed up with that connection.
 
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