First of all, I'm a noob here so 'hi' to everyone.
I've got a no frills IIC+ (60 watt, no eq, no 'verb, black tolex) that has been my dream amp since I found it used for a good, low price about 3 years ago. I haven't been gigging for the last year or so and don't often get the chance to crank it up. About a month ago I did get the chance and noticed a nasty raspyness that followed the envelope of the notes, especially those around A (multiple octaves). I tried swapping out tubes to no avail and then tried plugging it into an external cabinet which made the noise go away. From this I thought that the Black Shadow was crapping out on me, but after replacing the speaker I noticed the same problem only with different frequencies. Again, the problem goes away when connected to an external cab and doesn't appear until the amp is warmed dup a bit and played at louder volumes (master at 2 or higher, which is plenty loud for most of my bar gigs). I pulled the chassis and found that one of the cabinet's ground lugs was loose and found a lose diode (I think - black thing with a band on one end across one of the power tube sockets), both of which I repaired. This made absolutely no difference.
I've taken my amp into a friend's father that has spent his life repairing guitar (and other) amps and am hoping he'll be able to find the problem. However, when I first brought the amp in to him I wasn't able to get it to make the noise even at loud volumes. I took it back home and (of course) the noise came back after playing it for a minute or two.
I've tried putting a patch cord between the effects send and return on the off chance that this might be the problem, but although it seemed to have some kind of effect it didn't solve the problem.
Does anybody have any suggestions short of sending it to MB? I got it at a low enough price that assuming he can fix it I could probably recoup most of my costs if I did decide to sell at some point, but I really do like the amp and wouldn't want to if I can avoid it.
Thanks for reading!
I've got a no frills IIC+ (60 watt, no eq, no 'verb, black tolex) that has been my dream amp since I found it used for a good, low price about 3 years ago. I haven't been gigging for the last year or so and don't often get the chance to crank it up. About a month ago I did get the chance and noticed a nasty raspyness that followed the envelope of the notes, especially those around A (multiple octaves). I tried swapping out tubes to no avail and then tried plugging it into an external cabinet which made the noise go away. From this I thought that the Black Shadow was crapping out on me, but after replacing the speaker I noticed the same problem only with different frequencies. Again, the problem goes away when connected to an external cab and doesn't appear until the amp is warmed dup a bit and played at louder volumes (master at 2 or higher, which is plenty loud for most of my bar gigs). I pulled the chassis and found that one of the cabinet's ground lugs was loose and found a lose diode (I think - black thing with a band on one end across one of the power tube sockets), both of which I repaired. This made absolutely no difference.
I've taken my amp into a friend's father that has spent his life repairing guitar (and other) amps and am hoping he'll be able to find the problem. However, when I first brought the amp in to him I wasn't able to get it to make the noise even at loud volumes. I took it back home and (of course) the noise came back after playing it for a minute or two.
I've tried putting a patch cord between the effects send and return on the off chance that this might be the problem, but although it seemed to have some kind of effect it didn't solve the problem.
Does anybody have any suggestions short of sending it to MB? I got it at a low enough price that assuming he can fix it I could probably recoup most of my costs if I did decide to sell at some point, but I really do like the amp and wouldn't want to if I can avoid it.
Thanks for reading!