i love my new f-50 but it has a problem..

[willrock]

this sucks! i just exchanged my express 5:50 with f-50, coz for only one reason, i like f50 better.. i didnt had a problem for the past 2 days since i got it, but now, while i was playing, the sound disappears once in a while but it comes back when i mess around with the standby switch or with the channel selection switch.. i tried diagnosing the preamps tube but the problem is still there.. any of you guys experienced this? any suggestions?? i really love this amp and i hate to return it

 

[MesaDCLP]

Change the power tubes, they are not new?!!

 

[willrock]

hi mesadclp, thanks for the fast response, its guitar center's floor model, so i dont think the power tubes are new. u think its the power tubes? possible..

 

[Charlie]

Does the sound go away completely or does it just fade out a little?

You might want to try re-seating your tubes to see if that helps.

It could be a number of things... a tube... bad volume pot.. a cable etc..

 

[Platypus]

+1 to checking the cable. Isolate the issue to just the amplifier if you can.

 

[willrock]

the sound fades for a moment then disappears. i just tried swapping the power tubes around, i hope this helps. if not i might have to call mesa and see what they say. i just hate to go to all those troubles of returning the amp to them or such, i dont wanna let go of this amp :?

 

[plumptone]

I have good news and bad news. I ordered a custom F-50 last year (wood & wicker) and after the first couple of months this started happening for me too. I did the whole tube diagnosis thing, and ended up replacing the me all. The problem continued. Here's what would happen for me - about 2 hours into a gig or rehearsal after running the thing pretty hard it would start stuttering. Not a volume drop, but a complete shut off of sound. Lights all on etc, just no sound intermittently. Turning the amp off for a couple of minutes would bring everything back to life, but it would always happen again unless I shut down for over 30 minutes. Sounded like a hard tremolo, but not in a good way.

The first tech I took it to sat on it for 6 weeks and couldn't get the cutout to happen for him. I took it back, and first gig out, the problem reoccurred - not a good thing to have happen at a gig. Fortunately I had my DC-3 as a back up.

Took it to a different tech. They were able to get the problem to manifest. They were stumped as to the source of the problem, and ended up calling Boogie. Turns out there have been numerous problems with a batch of C-90 speakers. I'm not fully convinced that's my problem, but as I write this a new and supposedly upgraded C-90 is being installed in my amp. It's covered by the warranty. Sounds to me like you're having the exact same problem I was.

Before you take it in, do all the usual things like verify it's not the tubes (I actually did have 2 bad preamp tubes right off), make sure your cables are all good, and ideally just run it guitar>amp and take everything else out of the chain. If you still have the problem, I'm willing to bet you're having the same issues I am. (Boogie has said that ifit's not the speaker, the chassis is going to have to be shipped back to Mesa so that they can look at it - not something I want to deal with at all.)

I orded mine March last year and got it in June. Apparently serial numbers above and below mine have had these speaker problems. Good luck. I will write a detailed post to all the F-50 folks on here once I get mine back and have verified that the problem has been fixed.

 

[willrock]

thanks a lot for the ideas guys,i changed the power tubes already and just run the guitar straight to the amp with a cable of course. then after like 40 mins of playing, it kind of happend again but it went right away, so wht i did, i tried to mute the speaker and tried to almost max out the volume on both channels while playing on mute, thinking it might just be a bug or something that just needs some power maxing.. i hope im right though, but if this happens again, im gonna have to just return this to guitar center while its still in a 30 day period and probably just buy another off ebay.. what dya think guys? good idea?

 

[NuSkoolTone]

Don't forget to check the FX loop. ESPECIALLY if it has the Serial Mod!

When I had the Express I got the fading thing you described. AFTER I used the Serial FX loop once. I put a patch cable from send to return and problem solved. I tried using deoxit, but it didn't work 100%.

 

[willrock]

i still have the parallel loop. made a lot of improvement though after i changed the power tubes, but it happend again once but not as obvious and went away really fast.. so it might be the power tubes, but how come it happend again? though not as bad

 

[plumptone]

The problem's not going to go away for you if after replacing your tubes you're still experiencing it. I've gone through all of that too. I got mine back from my amp tech last night - they replaced the original speaker with an upgraded C-90. I'll be play testing it this weekend to see if it's fixed my problem. I remain hopeful at this point that it was the speaker all along. If you have an extension speaker hanging around, try running your amp through that and see if the problem goes away. If it does, you have a bad speaker.