I had the exact same problem on a friend's Renagade a few years ago and to be fair, Egnater customer service were great and acknowledged that the power transformers were a known issue and offered to supply an uprated replacement, and even with shipping to the UK, it only cost a little over £100, and as it was a direct replacement, was easy to fit and is still working today.
I had been looking at an Egnater recently. As it checked many of my boxes. Mainly the $$$ haha. From what I gather - when they work they are great. And it’s random as to what or when it will fail. After adding in the cost of a new Mercury transformer and Jupiter caps- I decided it was like putting Pirellis and a Turbo on a pinto. Decided to build my own. Going Bassman with some light mods. Buying parts bit by bit so the sticker shock doesn’t kill the Wife unit (See also: Financial manager). But it will be exactly what I want in the end.
This amp is like having a bassman, an 18w Marshall, and a Jose Modded JCM all in one. It is not a pinto, it is a Mazda RX that has heated seats and surround sound.
I had one of those and I got a direct replacement from Mercury magnetics. Had to solder quick connectors to the leads. It sounds great!! Sold it few years latter.
I went through this exact same thing a few months back with an Egnater Tourmaster 4100 head. I took the exact same steps as yourself, and discovered that the primary windings on the power transformer had indeed gone short. On the Tourmaster, it's a toroid style transformer, that's only available from Egnater, and it was NOT cheap. Mercury does make a suitable replacement, however, it would require me to redrill holes and modify the chassis to install it. The Mercury transformer was somewhere around $400 or so to purchase, so it would have been about a $600 bill for the owner. I had to call the owner and deliver the bad news. He told me to return the unit to him and he would just put it in his closet. You can't win them all sometimes...
Lyle- thanks for stating that this is not Bruce's work. I've known him for 40 years and still have his original Natec TM-75. he must be very disappointed by this type of crap.
Yeah, I know Bruce too. I won't speak for him, but I will say his designs in these amps are great but the new company executed them in terrible ways. Bruce-era Egnater amps are wholly different beasts.
@@PsionicAudio how do we tell which Egnator amps are Bruce-era builds? I was about to buy a mint, slightly used Tweaker-88 but this little detail scares me a bit
Egnater and Bugera amps were big for a hot minute in stores. Dont see them often anymore, same with Jet City. They came and went fast. Never got to try Jet City or Bugera, but I did try a few Egnater amps.
I’ve seen and read a lot of interviews with Bruce Egnater. Heck of a nice guy and very knowledgeable amp designer/builder. It must really piss him off that a company would sub out to a Chinese manufacturer known to do things on the cheap and ruin his good name.
He did design this range of amps and I think there are a lot of forward thinking ideas in these. I used to have a Tourmaster head about 12 years ago and it was a very cool amp. It's a real shame that these have issues. As far as I know Bruce is no longer even involved with the brand carrying his name.
I’m a year late to these comments but I love my egnater renegade 2x12 but man more issues then any other amp I had and fell on hard times sold other amps kept this and after sold all my other amps now all the egnater issues started happening
Yeah, well he made the money from selling the company. Inexcusable. He chose to outsource to China and do a crappy job of dealing with quality control. Everyone I know that bought a Renegade Tourmaster had to replace trannies. Bruce is a capitalist predator, in spite of the fact that he can build good boutique amps. He made his money, he doesn't care. He's responsible for being irresponsible.
Reinforces my theory that knowing what something is NOT is as important as knowing what it IS. And, of course, replacing the power transformer and doing all that work only gets you to a point where you get to discover all the bad things the transformer failure did to the solid state gizmos and doodads. There's no guarantee that there isn't something else wrong in this amp. And, of course, there's availability and pricing to consider as you have mentioned.
Thank you for the PS problem search procedure!! Renegade on my bench, and the wire colors seem correct so does that mean it's older?? Worst thing is the adhesive from the tin foil shielding, I needed acetone to clean that, what a mess. Owner says it doesn't mix, I never got that far. I pulled tubes and put the light bulb in line and I found a high current draw when Orange PT secondary wires are connected. C1 is bulging and 12V is not present, all fuses are OK. I am going to change C1, the Bridge rectifier and Zener for S&G but I have concerns. How did you guys end up with your repairs?
Oh, really interested as I own two of these amps one I bought secondhand which needed the little green thermistor changed as they caused a problem also replaced and installed cooling fans inside with upgraded diodes for power regulation one problem I've always had with these amps is the direct out the sound guys always say it keeps clipping the signal could possibly be their fault but it's happened to me a few times
Chinese Egnater amps notoriously have bad stock power transformers on older models. I have a Tourmaster that had a bad power transformer that needed to be replaced. I was lucky they had a replacement at Egnater in LA, California when mine needed to be swapped about 9 years ago.
If the thermistor was the issue would it continue to blow fuses? I have a tourmaster 4100 thats i powered on and the thermistor sparked and it blew the main fuse on the back. To a point it tripped the breaker of my home
It pisses me off whenever someone curses Bruce out for these problems which he had no control over. HE'S NOT INVOLVED WITH BUILDING THESE AMPS, PEOPLE! He's a true gentleman and really got his name screwed by this unscrupulous 3rd party company.
"Ah, reputation---- the bubble". Willam Shakespeare. And now, Mr Egnater is left to wonder where he can go to get his reputation back. The cautionary part of this tale is, never sell your name; the world has too many "zombie brand" companies already, and who among us wants to have their name plastered all over a pile of e-waste at the landfill?
@@PsionicAudio I saw a Buddy Guy play through a pair of CyberTwins once, possibly provided by the backline sound company ---- somebody came out from behind the stage after almost every song and adjusted the amplifiers for Buddy. I love Buddy's singing but he's had crappy overdriven tone for years. (It was a good quad-bill show, overall: Tommy Castro, John Hiatt, Buddy Guy, and BB King. Tommy Castro was particularly good, and BB's Hammond/Leslie player was on fire!).
@@goodun2974 Just my 2 cents worth. Not the first time something like this has happened,and won't be the last.The good name of Bob Ross has been dragged thought the mud as of late. And to Boot his son Steve is the one that is living with the fallout.
The sad and scary part: You know the expense and labor cost of replacing the PT, but you don't yet know whether there is an underlying problem that caused the PT failure and also needs to be addressed.
They just went too fine gauge on the wire to save money. It happens to a ton of them after a certain production date when they decided to tighten the purse strings.
A 5$ fuse cost me 200$ for labor because I guess it was so hard to get to now this thing is playing at half volume I bought it when it came out should of got a fender
Would be amazing if B.A.D. would produce Egnater amps instead of overseas(as far as using cheaper parts and botched redesigns) but the damage may have been done?
@@goodun2974 Boutique Amps Distribution, they produce Synergy (designed by Egnater), Friedman, Morgan, Soldano, Tone King, Diezel USA, Bogner pedals and Wampler pedals.
I have a renegade combo. The tubes glow when turned on but the front lights don’t turn on and there is no sound. Any idea where I could start? Thanks for the content!
@@PsionicAudio It's sad because Bruce designed a cool amp and then the assembly line completely botched it.. The one I'm dealing with is eating T5AL/250 on F1. It's been a fun one to figure out but I'm not seeing any burnt connectors like that one you're dealing with. I kind of want to cut my losses here and sell it for parts at this point.
Egnaters are crap! They sound great, then die. While Bruce enjoys the money from outsourcing and then selling his company. This is the problem of the modern world, disgusting.
