Is a Fender Twin for $599 too good to be true?

pikingrin

pikingrin

what is this?
I guess I'm asking this a little bit too late since I just carried that heavy bastard upstairs but...

I just stopped in to my neighborhood guitar shop earlier and they had a used Fender Twin in extremely good cosmetic condition with all paperwork, footswitch, etc included. It fired up and sounded good, too. I guess I'm a little worried because I would have thought that even a used Twin would fetch a little more money than $600 (It had been marked down from $780 already).

I traded in an older Marshall acoustic amplifier and walked out only dropping $380 on a $1300 amplifier. I guess I'm feeling the opposite of buyer's remorse and thinking that I got screwed somehow even with such a great price.

Any thoughts? Should I open it up and look at anything specific to make sure it's legit?
 
Well, I just went up and cranked it up a little bit and I think I'm noticing a weird sound when I play anything...it's almost like a wire is moving with the vibrations and hitting something else, or there may be something wrong with the electronics. Clean or dirty, it's only when I play. There's a little bit of noise with the volume control of the guitar all the way down but when I do either chords or single notes, there's just a noise..maybe a hissing noise when a note is playing. It stops as soon as I dampen the strings...

Does this sound like a common issue with Twins or, for that matter, has anyone and this kind of thing happen with amps period?
 
Check the speakers for coil rub.
If you have another cab...see if the noise is still there with it. If not, it's the speakers.

That said....I had a weird buzz on a combo one time....thought it was the speaker, swapped it out...nope.
Thought it was the tubes, swapped them out....nope.
Went over it a bunch of times, and even took the amp chassis out of the cab, and it would go away....then put it back, and the noise came back.
Finally, I traced it down to a single wire that was laying in the chassis, and it would vibrate when the amp was in the cab, and cause the light buzz.
A little silicone caulk on the wire/chassis (or some hot glue) and problem solved....but what a PITA to find the cause!!!
 
muttley600 said:
Just play it louder...
Click to expand...

Haha, I tried that actually. The noise from the amplifier was still there but a little hidden underneath the amps volume...but then my wife got louder. :D

miroslav said:
Check the speakers for coil rub.
Click to expand...

I will check this out tomorrow. I'm hoping it's not a loose wire like you mentioned, I don't exactly feel like dropping the chassis quite yet but I read a similar thread on the Fender forum and that was the fix. I will try it out on another cab first though, that seems like the easiest starting point. Thanks!
 
if you have a big respect for voltage and amps....i learned a trick that found a amp buzz, and that was using a 10" long, 1" x 1" wooden piece, and kind of tapped the caps a bit and found a bad solder buzz.
i think the guy who sold thought he tricked me, but with 5 minutes of soldering, i got the last laugh and the amps been running great for years.
 
Well, external cabinet sounded the same so it's got to be some kind of electrical issue. Off to my friendly local amp tech tomorrow to get this sorted out. Oh, well. I guess it still wasn't a bad deal unless the cost to repair it is more than a few hundred bucks.

CoolCat said:
If you have a big respect for voltage and amps
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I can wire a house up but when it comes to electronics...well, let's just say that I'm pretty sure that I'd end up spending more to get the original problem compounded by me messing with it all fixed up. If I have time tonight to drop the chassis out I may try and find something that's not a conductor and do some tapping though.

Thanks for all of the suggestions guys, I appreciate it!
 
arcaxis said:
Fender "Evil" Twin (red knobs) owner here. May not be the culprit, but try reseating the tubes by either removing them and reinserting them or just kind of gently wobble them around in their sockets, the power tubes in particular. Amp powered off when you do this. Mine acted up a few years back with sort of a similar noise when played and one of the tubes pins wasn't making good contact.
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Gave that a shot earlier today, removed and re-seated every tube in the chassis. Cranked it up and there still wasn't any difference - still that hissy buzz in the output. I've already spoken to the guy that's recapping my old Magnatone and he's going to fix it up for me. Said it shouldn't take much, pretty sure he's dealt with this kind of thing before.

Days like today make me wish that I was an electronics guru. Oh well.
 
pikingrin said:
Well, I just went up and cranked it up a little bit and I think I'm noticing a weird sound when I play anything...it's almost like a wire is moving with the vibrations and hitting something else, or there may be something wrong with the electronics. Clean or dirty, it's only when I play. There's a little bit of noise with the volume control of the guitar all the way down but when I do either chords or single notes, there's just a noise..maybe a hissing noise when a note is playing. It stops as soon as I dampen the strings...

Does this sound like a common issue with Twins or, for that matter, has anyone and this kind of thing happen with amps period?
Click to expand...

Is it a circuit board amp or point to point wiring?

If there are circuit boards in it o suspect that may be your culprit. The fender hot rod amps.have circuit board problems and the resistors and solder jointd crack repeatedly ...all due to the heat from the transformers and tubes.

first thing I would do is get a piece of wood (a pencil will work)...
Lightly tap every tube, componets, and move the wires around a bit. If something you tap or move makes noise it may be the problem.
I've had good luck re flowing the solder joints with a solder iron.

and I've not had good luck re-flowing the solder. You win some and you lose some.
i usually go as far as tapping on everthing and re flowing every solder joint.
next step is to decide whether the amp is worth sending to a tech. (I've never got a tube amp fixed by a good tech for less than $250.). Of course I usually fix the obvious easy stuff that can be identified by visual inspection, tapping, and re-soldering...that a tech would not charge much to fix.

Good luck with it man.
 
jimistone said:
Is it a circuit board amp or point to point wiring?
.....
next step is to decide whether the amp is worth sending to a tech. (I've never got a tube amp fixed by a good tech for less than $250.). Of course I usually fix the obvious easy stuff that can be identified by visual inspection, tapping, and re-soldering...that a tech would not charge much to fix.

Good luck with it man.
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It is a circuit board amp, not point to point unfortunately. I just dropped it off earlier when I picked up my recapped '56 magnatone that he just finished. We dropped the chassis before I left, in case it was something like a rogue wire vibrating somewhere, and it was narrowed down to a busted solder joint in the power amp stage. His fees are pretty reasonable, he fixed my Maggie (re-capped and NOS power tubes installed) for $220, quoted me $90 for this repair so it's not too terrible. All in all I will only be in this amp for around $500 total so I'm satisfied.

He even sent me with a little 5w handwired 1x8" amp that he built, to boot. Gotta love the small-town electronics gurus! :thumbs up:
 
pikingrin said:
It is a circuit board amp, not point to point unfortunately. I just dropped it off earlier when I picked up my recapped '56 magnatone that he just finished. We dropped the chassis before I left, in case it was something like a rogue wire vibrating somewhere, and it was narrowed down to a busted solder joint in the power amp stage. His fees are pretty reasonable, he fixed my Maggie (re-capped and NOS power tubes installed) for $220, quoted me $90 for this repair so it's not too terrible. All in all I will only be in this amp for around $500 total so I'm satisfied.

He even sent me with a little 5w handwired 1x8" amp that he built, to boot. Gotta love the small-town electronics gurus! :thumbs up:
Click to expand...
Yeah, at 90 bucks it's a no-brainer to get it fixed. I figured it would probably be a cracked circuit board or a bad solder joint.

I'm no amp tech be any stretch of the imagination but from everything I've read and from personal experience ...when you have that crackling static noise coming out when you pluck the strings, on these fender circuit board amps, 9 times out of 10 it's a cracked resistor, a bad solder joint, or a cracked circuit board.
Glad you're getting off so cheap on the repair!
 
pikingrin said:
it was narrowed down to a busted solder joint in the power amp stage. His fees are pretty reasonable, he quoted me $90 for this repair so it's not too terrible. All in all I will only be in this amp for around $500 total so I'm satisfied.

He even sent me with a little 5w handwired 1x8" amp that he built, to boot. Gotta love the small-town electronics gurus! :thumbs up:
Click to expand...

thats a great deal. the one I did was a power amp stage area too, as jimi mentioned its common the boards do this...the one I did was a Fender Bassman by the power supply too.

Power Amp section is probably hotter and offers more issues..possibly more heat there and then cold, then heat, then cold. i know in basic thermal films of different types there is a expansion and contraction difference which can cause the cracking or peeling, due to one film cooling down faster than another...

paying someone to solder and do the work is like paying someone to mow the yard or fix a car, not a big deal and at least you had an idea what you're paying for. a free 5 w amp is cool....

now thats fixed, what were the issues that made you want to re-cap your amp?
 
CoolCat said:
now thats fixed, what were the issues that made you want to re-cap your amp?
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The Magantone? Mainly because it was old. Bad reason but when I got it I did a lot of work to clean out all the dust that had built up in the cabinet and the chassis. It played "good enough" for a little while but the vibrato never did work on it. The first time I plugged a guitar into it after my move from Houston to Indy (with the amp in the U-haul trailer) it started to smell almost like there was an electrical fire about to happen - like burning wire insulation or something. Rather than set my house on fire I found this local guy to take a look at it.

Worked out pretty well; I've spent more than a few hours in his shop since I dropped the magnatone off and the guy really knows his stuff. He spends most of his time fixing amps but also hand-builds and hand-wires his own designs as well. I'll have to take a picture of the modest little amp he sent me home with, it's a pretty mean little piece of equipment. Built into an old refurb chassis, single volume control, single tone control and an on/off switch. Cranks out some nice tones though, outside of a wire that I've got to nail down with some silicone to keep from vibrating at loud volumes. Not sure what tubes in it are but the speaker is a Quam that was made in the early '60s.
 
pikingrin said:
The Magantone? Mainly because it was old. Bad reason but when I got it I did a lot of work to clean out all the dust that had built up in the cabinet and the chassis. It played "good enough" for a little while but the vibrato never did work on it. The first time I plugged a guitar into it after my move from Houston to Indy (with the amp in the U-haul trailer) it started to smell almost like there was an electrical fire about to happen - like burning wire insulation or something. Rather than set my house on fire I found this local guy to take a look at it.

Worked out pretty well; I've spent more than a few hours in his shop since I dropped the magnatone off and the guy really knows his stuff. He spends most of his time fixing amps but also hand-builds and hand-wires his own designs as well. I'll have to take a picture of the modest little amp he sent me home with, it's a pretty mean little piece of equipment. Built into an old refurb chassis, single volume control, single tone control and an on/off switch. Cranks out some nice tones though, outside of a wire that I've got to nail down with some silicone to keep from vibrating at loud volumes. Not sure what tubes in it are but the speaker is a Quam that was made in the early '60s.
Click to expand...
Do you have that guy's contact info? I'm constantly buying and selling amps. He might have built something I'm interested in buying. You never know when you buy an amp if it might(in a few years) be the next Dumble or something. PM it to me if you don't mind. Thanks!
 
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