Do I sell my Wizard or take Boss to small claims court?

  • Thread starter Thread starter ErikT
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DanTravis62 said:
The way the load works in the TAE does not sound safe to me.

I'm not an expert, and i'm sure the TAE owners will rave about it sounding great, which it probably does - all boss stuff sounds good.

But there's a reason I got a powerstation instead. I've heard a bunch of stories of blown OTs on the internet and have two IRL friends who've blown transformers with a TAE. One with a DSL, and one with a tophat emplex.
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Same. I use reactive loads almost exclusively and I wouldn't put a Boss TAE anywhere near any of my amps just from all the stories I've heard about them.
 
ners said:
:oops: now I feel the need to go check all my amps. Shouldn't most larger amps be like 2-3 amp fuses? I'm surprised something as boutique as Wizard would use 10.
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Yes 4 amp in the mains and 2 amp in the HT
 
TheGreatGreen said:
Same. I use reactive loads almost exclusively and I wouldn't put a Boss TAE anywhere near any of my amps just from all the stories I've heard about them.
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I don't pretend to understand the math, but what I do understand is a couple people i know IRL whove blown amps with them :dunno:

Not to mention all the posts online

Its just not worth the risk to me
 
narad said:
While you were changing knobs on the TAE, or not?
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Changing the TAE knobs had nothing to do with it. I took the amp to a tech and he found nothing wrong with it. I remember John Suhr had alot to say about the TAE on TGP. He warned not to use it.
 
CarlF said:
Changing the TAE knobs had nothing to do with it. I took the amp to a tech and he found nothing wrong with it. I remember John Suhr had alot to say about the TAE on TGP. He warned not to use it.
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Hmm, that's worriesome. I don't see in a static setting what could go wrong with it vs. any other load... I have one though and the stories are a bit unsettling.
 
On Tone Talk, John Suhr said the impedance at high resonance was concerning and could cause flyback voltage which would eat away at the transformer over time.

More recently Pete Thorn used one with a Plexi while touring. Apparently his amp was modded by Suhr with diodes to protect from flyback, just in case (the diodes break in the event of flyback and render the amp useless until replaced). But all comments around this seem to be "just keep it low and you'll be fine" and I haven't seen any commentary around needing those diodes replaced.

I've been trying to follow this closely, since I have one, and there really isn't that many horror stories (this Wizard one sounded more like trying to cover up user error). So far I've had no issues with the TAE and 2 Marshall Plexi's, a Monomyth Skeleton Key, Milkman Half-Pint, Fender Showman, and a GZA Hellion.
 
ners said:
On Tone Talk, John Suhr said the impedance at high resonance was concerning and could cause flyback voltage which would eat away at the transformer over time.

More recently Pete Thorn used one with a Plexi while touring. Apparently his amp was modded by Suhr with diodes to protect from flyback, just in case (the diodes break in the event of flyback and render the amp useless until replaced). But all comments around this seem to be "just keep it low and you'll be fine" and I haven't seen any commentary around needing those diodes replaced.

I've been trying to follow this closely, since I have one, and there really isn't that many horror stories (this Wizard one sounded more like trying to cover up user error). So far I've had no issues with the TAE and 2 Marshall Plexi's, a Monomyth Skeleton Key, Milkman Half-Pint, Fender Showman, and a GZA Hellion.
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Yikes. So is that just at the literal "hi" resonance setting? Not sure I ever run mine that way.
 
narad said:
Yikes. So is that just at the literal "hi" resonance setting? Not sure I ever run mine that way.
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Yeah. There's a graph floating around the Internet of the impedance curve at all settings and the resonance seems to spike logarithmically with the knob, so when on the low settings it's similar to other attenuators but when on the high settings it's significantly more than all competitors. John Suhr thinks this is bad for an amp, I'm not knowledgeable enough to say one way or the other. So I just keep my resonance impedance on the low settings and have had no issues (also had no issues with using it on the high settings for 2 years lol).

EDIT: Link to a post with the TAE's impedance curves
https://www.rig-talk.com/forum/threads/reactive-loadboxes-in-2023.278111/post-3494123

EDIT2: Link to post with other attenuator importance curves
https://forum.fractalaudio.com/thre...mpedance-curve-comparison.169430/post-2037564

EDIT3: Analyzing those charts, it seems most attenuators peak between 20-40ohms for resonance. The TAE (on low) peaks at like 22ohms, so presumably that setting is safe. The other settings the resonance peaks between like 100 and 180ohms, this is the questionable area. I don't know enough to draw conclusions on this, but the low setting seems even safer than many of its competitors (tonal quality is up to you to compare).
 
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ners said:
Yeah. There's a graph floating around the Internet of the impedance curve at all settings and the resonance seems to spike logarithmically with the knob, so when on the low settings it's similar to other attenuators but when on the high settings it's significantly more than all competitors. John Suhr thinks this is bad for an amp, I'm not knowledgeable enough to say one way or the other. So I just keep my resonance impedance on the low settings and have had no issues (also had no issues with using it on the high settings for 2 years lol).
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Well that's easy enough. It's rare that a forum thread saves me thousands of dollars, but it's possible this one just did! ;-)
 
Geez. Are other load boxes and attenuators thought to cause these sorts of problems?
 
What John states is correct. Normally an inductive load like a speaker has a resonant suck out located fairly high near the end of its capability around 4-6KHz. When the TAE resonance setting is set high it doesn’t have the same expected impedance response of a real speaker because it is nonrealistic and nonlinear. It can cause an artificially high impedance that begins to look open circuit to the OT (the same thing as unplugging your cabinet while playing but frequency dependently unplugging and plugging it) which unloads the stored magnetic flux in the OT back onto the plates of the tubes. The OT windings can then overheat and short from repeat events or until a tube fails due to arcing and blows a fuse.

If you use a TAE keep the resonance knob at zero. I’d recommend not owning one at all.
 
acceptance said:
Geez. Are other load boxes and attenuators thought to cause these sorts of problems?
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I don't know of any others that have built-in settings that could damage an amp, and I haven't heard of any issues with any other reactive load boxes from anybody else. For now it seems like the TAE is the only one that has a built-in setting that can cause these problems.
 
glip22 said:
You might want to lower that because the fuse is not doing it's job, which is to protect your transformer. 10 amp is way to high. If you have a tube voltage arc you will blow a transformer rather than the fuse. It happened to my Wizard. You are free of course to think what you wish. It's your amp but I am telling you without any doubt what I know to be accurate information. A 10 amp fuse will allow far too much current through it and your transformer will not handle it in the case of a tube arcing.
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You’re totally right and I’ve fused down to 2 & 4 amps as called for on the back panel.
What I’m getting at is I believe there is a method to Ricks madness related to over fusing. I think he does this to prevent something like a sketchy tube or slight voltage spike from shutting down your amp while you’re playing a stadium of 30k people.

If I was a pro touring guitarist being paid well I’d probably choose to be overfused.
As someone playing mostly in a studio environment no way .
I haven’t had any problems since lowering the fuse values
 
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