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Another broken Laney
Posted: Wed May 29, 2013 6:11 pm
by gusman2x
A VC15 that i've had a few months.
It's been "crackling" for a while. I wasn't really sure what it was that was doing it, but it did it with various leads, guitars, and pedals. Today i was playing for about 30 minutes, and it just died. Still have a pilot light, but zero sound at all.
Could this be something simple/inexpensive to fix? I was maybe thinking a valve (preamp?) but only guessing. I kinda don't believe in electricity, so know very little about it.
Posted: Wed May 29, 2013 11:52 pm
by Sloan
tap/wiggle tubes for starters.
Posted: Thu May 30, 2013 2:08 am
by h8mtv
First thing I'd do is pull the leads off the speaker and put a 9v battery to the speakers terminals. If it pops your speaker is good. Do not try this with a horn, it will kill it.
I have had a few speakers voice coils go the way you described.
Re: Another broken Laney
Posted: Thu May 30, 2013 7:38 am
by Doog
Try plugging your guitar directly into the FX loop RETURN
jack to assess if the problem is coming from the preamp by bypassing it:
NB: will be loud-as-fuck, roll your guitar's volume control all the way down and bring it up as required.
Also try plugging into the front, then sending the FX loop SEND to a mixing desk/pc/something that accepts line-level signal to see how the preamp alone is doing.
Posted: Fri May 31, 2013 8:30 am
by gusman2x
Well, I plugged the little fucker in last night, and it worked fine. That is for 30 minutes, then died again. I'm guessing that means the speaker's probably OK?
I tried plugging straight into the effects loop return, but nothing. Looking at the back of the amp, the valves were all out, so I would imagine that means something's stopping the power getting to the pre amp valve (pilot light is on).
Annoyingly, I found someone on another forum with the same amp, and the same problem. He's apparently send it back to Laney, and they've told him it's probably a faulty polyswitch/thermistor. That might make sense, as it supposedly takes arouns 20-30 minutes for an amp to heat up properly.
It's a tough spot actually, as I won the amp last year in a competition, so have no sales receipt. And I threw away the warranty card (obvioulsy).
Anyone got any ball park figures for a repair cost. I will contact a couple of local amp repair guys, but if it's getting up to the £100 mark, I might leave off for a while.
Fucknosocks