Blue Angel 4x10- Malfunction

[newblueangel]

Bought this amp for 500$!!!!!!! Ok that's the good part. Guy was an old musician who was offloading gear. Told me that it had two hours of play time on the tubes and hadn't been touched in almost a decade. Fired it up and it sounds GORGEOUS. I figure I got the score of a life time. Beautiful tone, best reverb I've ever heard. Really really loving this amp. BUT. 2 days after I got it I noticed that it was sounding... Wrong. This is my first tube amp so bear with me here. I'm going to attempt to describe this. No matter what, I am hearing what I'm playing on my guitar come through the amp. But it goes from a really clean, thin sound, and then it hits with a huge loud dirty tone for a while then clips back into this sort of scooped tone. I have switched guitars, cables, and pedals. The issue persists. The over all condition of the amp is great, but VERY VERY DUSTY. The pots are very scratchy and I can only imagine what the inside of the head looks like. Did I just buy an amp for a killer price, only to have to drop a ton of money on this? Any ideas about what could be causing this? I felt the cones and they are all moving and none are seizing up. It persists on both inputs and with all tube configurations. I really love this amp and am needing some seasoned advice on where to go from here. Thanks.

 

[domct203]

If the amp has been sitting for 10 years there could be power capacitors failing, but that would be worst case, and not a very expensive fix IMO.

Have you cleaned every jack with a quality contact cleaner like Caig DeOxit D-5 Cleaner?

This could just be oxidation on the jack contacts, especially with the description of scratchy pots.

If you want to clean the pots as well, be sure to follow the cleaner with a quality Fader/Potentiometer lube like Caig DeOxit Fader Lube.

Dom

 

[Paul74]

I have a Blue Angel, I had no end of problems trying to find the cause of a horrible intermittent noise.

Turns out it was the Mojo Module. They seem to have a habit of dying in very noisy ways. They can be removed as long as the effects loop is bypassed, unless you're able to get a replacement (no longer made).

Sounds great now!

 

[elvis]

There is no question that maintenance in long-overdue.

I recommend pulling the chassis and cleaning the dust out and de-oxidizing the pots and plugs. I would also deoxidize and straighten the pins in the tube sockets.

If that doesn't do the job, there is a good chance you have a bad tube or tubes. Even brand-new tubes go bad, quality and reliability is generally poor for tubes. There are hundreds of posts on this site for isolating bad tubes.

 

[newblueangel]

Thanks everyone for the advice! Ordered the deoxy and will post an update when I get a chance to work on her. Great community here!

 

[newblueangel]

Got the deoxit today and sprayed in both input jacks. Sprayed on jack and plugged in and out, rotated, waited twenty minutes. Issue persisted . Sounds like I'm taking it to a local shop to get it looked at and cleaned up. Any other ideas what could be causing this? A friend mentioned transformer failure, power tube malfunction, rusted tube pins...

 

[green_henry]

Have you looked at the tubes while the amp is on and warmed up? Sometimes it's easy to spot a bad tube because it's glowing differently than the others (or not glowing at all).

Eventually, all the tubes are going to fail anyway, so you might want to replace them before paying somebody to look at it.