Fender Blues DeVille - She's breaking up!??

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WERNER 1

WERNER 1

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A buddy of mine has a Fender Blues Deville, I believe it's a 90's one (tweed w/ 4-10's - 60W)

Sunday morning we noticed that the clean was breaking up, so I grabbed a choice set of tubes out of my Carvin Belair that I know are good, but the problem still remained. About 15 minutes into our set, it started getting progressively worse until he just shut it down and switched over to his acoustic guitar.

I'm sure we'll have to take it in at some point, but I was wondering if any of you have had this problem before, and if so, what the problem/solution/ fix was.........Or if anyone has any suggestions on some things to check (I'm pretty good with a meter and a soldering iron.:) )

Thanks,
Rick
 
first of all was everthing in front of the amp eliminated.
does the amp have two channels
does it happen on both,
etc.
first , usually by process of ellimination through common sense, you can pinpoint which stage is causing the problem unless the amp goes down all together.
Once that is established you can go from there.
If you haven't taken it in yet, get that info and come back and let us know what ya got.
 
When you say you replaced tubes with a known "good" set, did you mean pre amp or power amp tubes ....or both? Are the tube sockets tight?
 
What does "breaking up" mean?

Static or normal tube break up?
 
I used to own the same amp: Fender Blues De Ville, all tube, 2 speakers, 60 watts... very fricking LOUD and HEAVY amplifier. I bought it for apx $500-600 brand new in 1994. If I put it on 3, the windows would rattle. I owned it for about 11 years. Towards the end, I would get lots of "noise" and "breakup" from it... just touching the knobs (any of them), and I would get crackle. The crackle would only last a few seconds, then stop if I didn't touch it anymore.

Also, the two input jacks were pieces of shit. They didn't last but about 5 years, and were perpetually loose.

I tried cleaning the thing several times, but could never get rid of the "crackle" noise. Some days, towards the end of our time together, it wouldn't play at all, and just "crackle."

I didn't like the amp anyway... it didn't sound good unless you had a lot of effects in front of it. ( I play high energy rock). I could have taken it in to an amp doctor to have it properly cleaned and fixed, but quite frankly, I didn't want to waste money on it. I ended up selling it off for about $220 and bought something else that I'm much happier with. I was glad to see it go and I will never buy a Fender amp again.
 
I just had a problem with a crackle sound with my tube amp. I put new preamp tubes in and that didn't solve the problem, but when I put new power tubes in the problem went away. Give more information about the sound and when it happens and maybe we can figure out what is going on.
 
I won't have the amp in my posession until this weekend, then I'll have a chance to work it over and better detail the problem(s).

As for now, all I know is what I stated above.....

Tubes I swapped out were Pre's

I believe that the only channel this guy uses is the Clean channel (uses pedals for overdrive)

I'm pretty sure that he's using the 1st imput as well.

Sorry, I don't have any more info at this time....:(

Rick
 
well like I said when I had a crackeling problem the solution was to switch out the power tubes.
 
My bad, I actually did change the power tubes as well........I forgot about that. Sorry.

Rick
 
WERNER 1 said:
My bad, I actually did change the power tubes as well........I forgot about that. Sorry.

Rick
Click to expand...
Well then I don't know what it is. Is the speaker messed up?
 
An amp tech buddy of mine emailed me about this problem, and here's what he had to say about it........

" I've seen two De Ville's lose a Driver plate
resistor. They couldn't handle the current. Try
measuring the plate resistors. One of them might be
open. That makes a crappy half-wave sounding
distortion. That would be pin 1 and pin 6 of the
driver tube to across whatever resistor they go to."

Thanks,
Rick
 
well if he is an amp tech then he probably knows more than most of us. He is probably right.
 
I had a similiar amp, a 212 DeVille. I had nothing but problems with it and took it in 8 times under warrantee for several problems before it was replaced. It burned grid resisters, then it would break up, then the last 4 times, it would have intermittent gain and would switch inbetween the 2 channels but only if the footswitch was plugged in. But if you unplugged the footswitch, it would still have intermittent gain and only at higher volumes. The tech couldn't find the problem and Fender didn't know either. I would be playing at a gig and sometimes it would start making noise. These are unreliable amps...Get rid of it!
 
I've been able to down load the schematics for this amp as well as an amp layout diagram for it............I was even lucky enough to find some mods for it as well. :)

I'm going to take a look at it this weekend, and I'll check out the VERY BASIC things I know to do (which really is very little), but you never know....

Thanks!

Rick
 
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