My fully loaded simul C+ is finally back to life. First off I would like to thank Boogiebabies for his support and advice during this process, it would not have been possible without him.
When I received this amp it looked like an absolute murder scene...
1) Someone had sent this back to Mesa in 1990 to have the outer simul sockets wired for 6L6's.. replacing the 220k resistors with 22ks and changing the bias resistor to a 22k instead of 33k.
2) Missing pins galore in the power tube sockets
3) Brightness reduction mods
4) Looks like the inside of a hoover vacuum... I didn't even think it was possible to look that bad.
Before:
This doesn't even begin to define how filthy this amp was... look in the directory for the big shots of how it looked.
I spent 4 days cleaning the amplifier with qtips and DeOxIT cleaner. I went through over 200 qtips; their tips were pure black afterwords. I cleaned everything aside from the GEQ board as that one tends to be sensitive apparently. All the pots and jacks were crusty and rusted out before, now they are smooth.
The tone alone before replacing the components was drastically better after the cleaning.
This is the result of the deep clean:
After this, all the components were replaced to be back to their normal stock configs and the pin1/8 mod was done on the outer EL34 sockets.
The result is 110% better than what I started with I am happy to report.. although interestingly enough, my other c+ (60-100) has brighter and more punchy tone thus far. The simul is much smoother and rounded and also much louder.
So I end with one question.. what are you C+ guys using for preamp tubes? What would you recommend aside from super expensive NOS tubes for good tone? The previous owner also put 2 SPAX7s in V1 and V2 (which are supposed to be super quiet and have more gain but I've read conflicting reports of this?) and I'm still not 100% blown away by the amp yet. Furthermore, the reverb knob is essentially useless up until 8 on the dial.. preamp issue?
The tone is great now but it feels restrained compared to my other C+.
When I received this amp it looked like an absolute murder scene...
1) Someone had sent this back to Mesa in 1990 to have the outer simul sockets wired for 6L6's.. replacing the 220k resistors with 22ks and changing the bias resistor to a 22k instead of 33k.
2) Missing pins galore in the power tube sockets
3) Brightness reduction mods
4) Looks like the inside of a hoover vacuum... I didn't even think it was possible to look that bad.
Before:
This doesn't even begin to define how filthy this amp was... look in the directory for the big shots of how it looked.
I spent 4 days cleaning the amplifier with qtips and DeOxIT cleaner. I went through over 200 qtips; their tips were pure black afterwords. I cleaned everything aside from the GEQ board as that one tends to be sensitive apparently. All the pots and jacks were crusty and rusted out before, now they are smooth.
The tone alone before replacing the components was drastically better after the cleaning.
This is the result of the deep clean:
After this, all the components were replaced to be back to their normal stock configs and the pin1/8 mod was done on the outer EL34 sockets.
The result is 110% better than what I started with I am happy to report.. although interestingly enough, my other c+ (60-100) has brighter and more punchy tone thus far. The simul is much smoother and rounded and also much louder.
So I end with one question.. what are you C+ guys using for preamp tubes? What would you recommend aside from super expensive NOS tubes for good tone? The previous owner also put 2 SPAX7s in V1 and V2 (which are supposed to be super quiet and have more gain but I've read conflicting reports of this?) and I'm still not 100% blown away by the amp yet. Furthermore, the reverb knob is essentially useless up until 8 on the dial.. preamp issue?
The tone is great now but it feels restrained compared to my other C+.
