Guitar Amp Problems

[danbos]

Guitar players, i could use your help if you can give it.

I've just got a little 10W Crate amp, and it has worked great for me for 2 years, but now the volume fades in and out. It used to only do it in spurts, it would go quiet for a couple seconds and then come back for a while, but now the seconds have gotten longer and, at the moment it's looking like it's permanently quiet. Any ideas what this might be? I took a look at the circuit board and didn't see anything visibly fried. I also know it's not the cable or guitar, since it has never done this to me during lessons.

[Martyred]

Guitar players, i could use your help if you can give it.

I've just got a little 10W Crate amp, and it has worked great for me for 2 years, but now the volume fades in and out. It used to only do it in spurts, it would go quiet for a couple seconds and then come back for a while, but now the seconds have gotten longer and, at the moment it's looking like it's permanently quiet. Any ideas what this might be? I took a look at the circuit board and didn't see anything visibly fried. I also know it's not the cable or guitar, since it has never done this to me during lessons.

maybe you've blown the speaker. How often did you play max out the volume on it?

[danbos]

maybe you've blown the speaker. How often did you play max out the volume on it?

Never. I don't know if I've even played it above a quarter of max volume. I only use it for practicing at home, so I never play it too loud.

[Sam!]

Sounds like one of the components on the circuit board is failing or failed.

[MusiciansLikeMe]

Is there an LED or something that lights up when the amp is powered? If so, do you hear any hiss when the amp is on? Have you tried the headphone jack (if it has one)? That would rule out the speaker if the headphones don't work, either. With a solid state amp, you should hear hiss from the speaker if the power amp is working.

A lot of solid state amps use power amp ICs designed for car radios and such. It will be bolted to a heatsink such as an aluminum bar or metal rail. They often fail. An amp tech can inject an audio signal into your circuit board at various places to determine where the failure is located. Intermittent operation like you described can be caused by a lot of things, though. Sometimes it is just a bad contact in the input jack (or effects loop jacks, if it has one). Look at solder joints for all wiring. These often break. Look at solder joints for heavy components, such as transformers (if it is mounted directly on the pc board). The foil traces often get cracked when the amp is set down too hard. The heavy transformer or other component tries to keep going due to its inertia and the copper trace often breaks right at the solder joints. If it is a very low-end amp, it will probably be cheaper to just replace it, rather than pay an amp tech to fix it. If you work on it yourself, just be carefull around the AC section. The good news is, you probably won't have anything higher than 120V (unlike tube amps), but that is still enough to kill you!

[guitarhero5150]

There's always the possibility that your guitar cable has shorted out. In fact, I would recommend that you try a different cord before you do anyhting else.