Express 5:50 problems

[Toon]

Bought a new Express 5:50 3 weeks ago. LOVE it. Had it about 12 days and........... whoosh........ went pop and died

Back to the dealer who sent it back to Boogie distributor (UK). Now fixed. Fault traced to a bad capacitor - changed out and now fine again.

When I went to the dealer to pick it up he said they'd had 2 or 3 of the Express amps back for the same problem so beware you newbie Express folks in case you get one with these poor capacitors in 'em.

$5 component wrecking a $1500 amp!

Where's Mesa's quality control gone? Anyone else had similar problems?

 

[crestwood1972]

I have heard from other dealers who report similar cases with that model.

Still, if they fix it for you and it's fine thereafter, then you got a terrific amp. Those cleans are better than the Lonestar in my opinion and the lead isn't half bad either.

 

[ol4t]

hmmm....three months or so here, almost daily one hour's worth of use, no problems here.

 

[ol4t]

prediction: mesa's headed into marshall quality area.

my pentode/triode switch arc'd on me on my RK1. $2800 amp.

once you have the artists and the history, then you can afford to cut down on QC....

This may be true, I've only owned one Marshall, but I don't perceive any intentional increased shortcuts to save money on Mesas. These amps have so many features, so many parts to be bought from other companies and I don't think Mesa is a big user of automated assembly, I'm not surprised tubes, caps, switches go belly up.
When I compare Mesas to Fenders, Marshall or Vox in build quality, I think they build the more "commercial grade" product.

 

[Reg]

Only 1 amp die?
I'd call that lucky.
If you want to cheer yourself up, look at my posting of 27th June!

 

[darren]

Mesa doesn't make most of the components that go into their amps, and obviously, they cannot stress-test every single part that goes into a single instrument. If a capacitor or a switch fails, it's not Mesa's fault... it's their suppliers whose QC is starting to slip.

Now, if an amp failed due to poor assembly or a poor design, then i'd say yeah, Mesa is slipping. But that does NOT seem to be the case here.

 

[Platypus]

Hmmm, both of you guys are from the UK, I wonder what happened to the shipment of Express amps on their way over the pond..

 

[ThunderMonkey]

Yeah, I guess any number of things can go wrong. Guys driving the forklift, loading/unloading, banging into the side of the shipping container en route, harsh handling at destination by local driver...etc.
It does sound like an abused batch to me.