Sound intermittently cutting out on my new Stiletto Ace?

[hfisher3380]

Bought a new Stiletto Ace head a few months ago and love it. However, recently the sound has started cutting out intermittently. It usually cuts completely out and sometimes I can hear the music coming through faintly when it happens. I tried changing tubes etc and no difference. I have found almost by accident that when it happens if I give it a decent whack on the top of the left side of the head the sound usually comes back in. Also, sometimes if I twist the output knob around a few times each way it will come back on. Obviously I'm going to take it back in to have this fixed, but I'm just wondering what it might be...a cold solder joint, perhaps?

Thanks for any help or insight you can give me!

 

[MJ Slaughter]

I'm not pretending to know what the problem is but when you mentioned turning the volume pot made it come back on it reminded me of a problem with the Nomads. They were notorious for having bad pots initially. I had a Nomad 100 that I had to replace several pots on. This may not be your trouble but if not under warranty I'd try replacing the suspect pot. Fortunately you don't have to get your hands dirty but it's a pain in the *** to take amps and cars to the shop.

 

[boogiemon]

Bought a new Stiletto Ace head a few months ago and love it. However, recently the sound has started cutting out intermittently. It usually cuts completely out and sometimes I can hear the music coming through faintly when it happens. I tried changing tubes etc and no difference. I have found almost by accident that when it happens if I give it a decent whack on the top of the left side of the head the sound usually comes back in. Also, sometimes if I twist the output knob around a few times each way it will come back on. Obviously I'm going to take it back in to have this fixed, but I'm just wondering what it might be...a cold solder joint, perhaps?

Thanks for any help or insight you can give me!

sounds like the effects loop jack(s). Try the hard bypass switch.

g'luck,

 

[hfisher3380]

Thanks for the suggestions, guys.

I don't think it's the effects loop problem (unfortunately, since that seems as if it would be a straightforward thing to fix). When I flip the rear switch to hard bypass, there is no difference. I never have the loop on and nothing connected since I have some pedals in the loop.

Hopefully it is something simple like a bad volume/output pot, as per the other suggestion. Any way of checking that? What would be involved in replacing it?

Any other suggestions before I bring it back in to be checked out?

Thanks!

 

[MJ Slaughter]

If you're under warranty you may need to have an authorized repair center do the work as to not void warranty but I'm not sure how the would treat that. Otherwise, I'd start by calling customer service and tell them what you're experiancing. Many times they've helped me out with my problems and if a pot is bad they'll know just what to send you. If you know how to solder it's easy to change a pot out.

 

[clutch71]

Preamp tubes are finicky and if you've swapped them and the problem persists, i'd say get it in to a tech. If you tried non-mesa tubes, i'd keep that your little secret as using other tubes voids the warranty. I think that's kind of lame because so many other preamp tubes sound really good in Mesa amps and in theory shouldn't cause any damage if you stick with 12AX7/ECC83/7025 preamp tubes.