ANGRY AMP REPAIR | Gibson Epiphone Blues Custom 30 Tube Rectifier (Soldano) 

I think you're on the wrong channel. The ADHD tube amp tech is THAT way --------->

@@TheGuitologist what's this guy's problem?? Somebody must have dip their balls in his Cheerios.

@@TheGuitologist you're to drawn out with shit..don't take it personally you're far from the only one

@@TheGuitologist dats some funny shit, bruh! It's good to see that you still got it 👍

@@grandudetonesnob7107 tell me what's funny what he said? Tell me he still got what?

@Filthy Peasant wow. That would be the biggest cap I've ever seen.

@Filthy Peasant Hi! Four hundred & seventy thousand microfarads? Oh man that's just so over the top I nearly shat myself lol!

@ExitThirteen hi! Yeah, about 2,000uF per amp of load is usually a good rule of thumb to use.

When to hold e'm.... and when to fold 'em ---> on that vol pot.

Also board mounted tube sockets and jacks. Pcb construction doesn't have to suck but board mounted parts are one way to make it will have problems at some point.

@@michaelknight4041 да, но ламповые панели очень греют плату, можно потерять контакты от температуры.

I appreciate that. I try to learn how to do many things. It’s nice to be noticed.

Скажите, игра пальцами, без медиатора?

Yep that's why it's always important to clean it off the boards after.

Have no idea why they have a standby switch on a valve rectified amp as it's the perfect soft start and no need for a standby switch at all.

That’s the secret cure to the hum of the fan😊 I love mine so much after I found those mods

Could those slide-on 1/4" female terminals be the locking type? They look like it. Require releasing a small tab on the terminal, will pull the guts out of a device if not released.

@@richpayton7162 Hi mate! I'm pretty sure they're just your bog standard female quick connect terminals (q.c.), or sometimes called spade terminals. I've never actually seen them 'lock' onto the male terminals that strongly before. I've seen them sort of lock onto a hard plastic insulator though. I'm pretty sure the problem is that it's just a crappy chinese switch.

Thanks William. Being right here with me unfortunately means also feeling my pain.

@@TheGuitologist That switch was hilarious.

Glad you enjoyed it!

Lately I'm fixing viewer amps. I have a ton of amps and guitars of my own I need to repair as well. I need to start peppering in some of my own stuff here and there too.

Hopefully this helps you with your issue. It's no secret these transformers are not good. I can recommend the Mercury so far, if you have the money to spend on it to make it really right.

I have that 65W flood light and that bigger bulb is I think 150W, IIRC. Those two do ok, but they light up bright pretty early on in the process. Thanks for watching. Glad you dug the video, Timothy. You're one of my OG channel supporters! I appreciate that.

@@TheGuitologist only thing i wondered was if you tested the transformer to see if that was indeed the issue, i mean it obviously was, but was just a wild chase you were on . good video my dude. pretty nice demo at the end too.

Not only will our kids have no future because of our selfish need for cheep stuff but they'll also inheret a bunch of broken down electronics they will have to pay to discard. Most Americans seem to really only care about themselves. Not the viewers of this channel though. That's why I'm here still. Many from the seventies and up inherited 60's strats and acres of land while their children get the junk that their selfish parents never got around to fixing. (The land was obviously sold so selfish Daddy can make pretend he's Jimi Hendrix and build a studio eventhough he can't really play). It's really a messed up thing we're doing to our kids. For this reason, I despise anyone who is just blindly voting for whoever the tv tells them too while acting like they care the whole damn time.

Here's the thing...this customer ended up having to spend quite a lot to replace the power transformer, and he's asking me to go ahead and do the same for the OT, so by the time he spends all that money, he'll have a great amp, but it could have been great from the get go if it had been built properly to begin with!

Thanks man. Just trying to get back to churning out good amp content for y'all.

The owner and I are talking about it.

@Marc Christopher hi! I was just wondering why you would think the o.p.t. might also need replacing as well? I mean, the p.t.'s in epiphone & legacy amps are well known to be underpowered & unreliable as found in the cases of mine & Brad's amps. But I haven't heard of problems generally with their output transformers. Have you experienced or heard otherwise?

@@nevillegoddard4966 Brad stated the transformers were known to have problems. Being one transformer has already predictively failed & the owner has already paid for bench time and shipping… why not replace any part that has known issues? Otherwise the owner could end up having to pay again for shipping and bench / diagnostic work. We also don’t know if the original failed power transformer may have caused some undetected damage to the output transformer. IMO.. If the amp was something I was intent on keeping and using regularly, I’d rather replace the transformer now, than hope it doesn’t fail and maybe be at a gig and *poof*. Kinda like when you change the timing belt on a Honda. You replace the water pump regardless of whether it’s failed or not. You have the engine apart…. Replace the components that are known to fail. But hey, I’m not a professional amp tech… so I may be completely wrong. In the end, it’s up to the owner of the amp.

@@marcchristopher6009 Oh right! I thought Brad was referring to just the power transformers though. You could be right too about the problem with the pt causing a problem with the opt, particularly if the problem was shorts between 2ndary windings in the pt. I'm thinking that's less likely in this case, than shorted turns in a particular winding, or a winding with a short to earth. From memory with my amp, the pt was running stinking hot due to the filament winding being insufficient to supply the load that was required from it. Something like 40% underpowered which is purely a poor choice of pt. Also the in-line fuseholder for the filaments had a high resistance in it & had melted. I'm pretty sure (but not definitely!) that each 2ndary winding would have a layer or 2 of insulation between it & the other windings adjacent. Now I've forgotten - is there a standard layout or format as to whether the hv 2ndaries are wound first or last, whatever? Regardless of what I said, if you're gonna be doing actual gigs with your amp you're right - you'd be better off changing the opt anyway. No doubt the 'Mercury' opt's are gonna be of a higher quality than the oem ones, & are therefore gonna sound better ay! So that's a bonus. And isn't the opt one of the key contributors to the sound after all? - And the speaker of course! Hmm. Yeah my amp has a no name 12 inch speaker in it D'oh! I'd probably use a 'Hammond' brand transformer if I was gonna replace mine, as I think they may be easier to get down here in Australia. As a side story, my old boss, after he retired, was building & rewinding opt's to supplement his income, & of course valve gear was always his hobby. So he'd rewound a 'conniseur's' (sp?) opt for their amp after it had gone open circuit, reinstalled in their (hifi stereo) amp, & returned it to them. The customer was happy with the repair but complained that now, in comparison, the original 'good' channel sounded like crap! The amp was rechecked & found to be working just fine. So the customer, being well-to-do with his 5 or $10k amp asked my old boss to rewind their perfectly operational other channel's opt. This was done & the customer was wrapped. Over time he gained a reputation for his opt's to the extent that customers who had their opt's previously rewound by the current 'guru' at the time - a Polish guy I think - to be rewound by Bob. So it turned out that Bob wound his opt's in such a way that the turns were 'intimately' wound, input & output layers alternately, rather than in bunches. This resulted in much better coupling from input to output, & consequently a purer, or cleaner sound. After investigation, it was found that this Polish guy was an ex-electric motor rewinder, where the turns were wound in bunches! Bob's opt's were so loved, that he worked on opt's for John Mellancamp & the Seekers! (rip Judith!). These opt's were obviously time consuming to rewind his special way, & thus quite expensive, but people were only willing to pay for them at a rate that only earned him about 15 bucks an hour, which was understandably insulting to him. So he abandoned the enterprise, sadly. What a bloody waste I say, & a sad endictment on peoples' greed. I must give him a call actually & see how he's doing; it's been a while.

You’re correct on the expense. The owner and I had that conversation before going forward with repair. The bright side is, with the better transformer, this is actually a very decent amp. I think we raised its value beyond a normal one.

@@TheGuitologist You certainly improved the power supply over the original part. The MM will last forever.

The clear sheath covers the tabs, the middle and bottom ones are completely unreachable no matter what, but I think all but one were installed upside down anyway, so there's no way to press the tab. Wiggling them should get them out without removing the terminal from the switch.

A tube rectifier is less efficient at doing its job. So what happens is the available DC voltages fluctuate as a result of this inefficiency when you ask all the tubes in the amp to suddenly operate like when you hit a note. The caps all have to refill themselves and they suck this current through the rectifier. A tube rectifier has more trouble recovering from this demand than silicon diodes and this results in an effect called "sag". This effect is not as desirable for some styles of music, like modern metal, for instance, but for other styles, it can be part of the tone and feel of the amp.

If you listen closely in many old rock and blues records the tube rectifier sag can be heard. Neil Young is notable for this as the Tweed Deluxe 5E3 is notorious for sag at high volume. You hit the note and it compresses like crazy, then blows up, makes for a really cool sound. Also, since it's less efficient you can crank the amp more which can be desirable if you want more breakup. For example, a Deluxe Reverb which has a much more efficient GZ-34 tube rectifier than the Tweed's 5E3 has way more headroom, punch and volume to the point of being hard to crank in many small venues and even rehearsing if you don't like earplugs.

I rather enjoyed playing though this one.

@@TheGuitologist The Valve Senior... (14w 6v6 pp) is more my style. It seems a bit less common.

I like there are no molex. Connectors to melt. That's pretty sweet.

Transformers are the Achilles heel. A long gig and too much heat I think breaks down the winding lacquer.

Yep. This was a bad era for Chinese electronics. High demand and low quality.

You might be able to find one. Or ask Edcor to build one maybe?

Thanks John.

I’ve created some of my intros. The one in today’s video was created by a viewer named Richard from the UK. He’s a super talented dude. There’s a linger version of this intro I cannot play anymore or they’ll try to copyright claim the audio.