Talked to the tech I use (Eric @ http://vikingamps.com/). He said he doubted if it was the resisters. He suspected the preamp tubes, told me I could use it be be gentle. On Friday night, I played around with it. I did the pencil flick test... none of the preamp tubes mad a sound but one of the 6L6s, however, did. Shut it all down and packed up for an early morning load in on Saturday. Saturday, since we were playing a chili cook-off, I took three amps; the SOB for crunch and leads, the Blues Jr for clean, and my Peavey KB-2 amp for synth. I've used this before and it worked well, although I never had the tone I wanted on the SOB; came close, but no cigar. We did 4 45 minute sets. After suffering through the 1st three sets, my friend, the sound tech, came up and asked me what I was doing to get such a crappy sound? I explained how I read the SOB worked. He asked to fiddle with it while I played. He dialed in magic and I finished the show with great Boogie tone! The settings were: Vol 1=4 Vol 2=8 Master=2.5 Treble=5 Bass=5 Mid=4 Reverb=2 Limit=0. I told him the Mark I manual warned against putting the bass up so high. He replied with, "When you've exhausted all the tricks in the manual with no success, trust your ears". Loaded up after that show, went home unloaded some gear (mostly the amps and synth "support system"), and headed out for a pickup gig. Just took the Boogie this time. We did two 1.5 hour sets with 1/2 an hour in between and the amp sang all night. During the break I was tuning and noticed a huge buzz in my rig. I bypassed my IEM and went direct, which led me to believe it was my panel connections in the back of the rack. I also noticed I was getting shocked each time I'd touch the mic while playing. Since I use a Line 6 Variax with it's power supply, I switched to just batteries... still got shocked. I just avoided contacting the mic all night. At the end of the night, I switched it to standby like I always do (it was also on standby during the break) and waited a bit. I then tried to switch the power off. The switch went down, but the power light stayed steady. I noticed some burning electronic smell and immediately unplugged it. Let it cool down before I moved it, and then loaded out. When I unloaded the car, I took it to the basement and set up. Plugged into the wall and blew a breaker. Contacted my tech and he said I probably had a shorted power switch. So, it's headed to him as soon as I can take it there. I won't have a big enough venue to play until December when I have two back to back weekends. Hopefully I can continue enjoying the new tone I found. I'll post the findings of the tech here when I find out.
