Egnater Renegade 65 - Very Noisy OD Channel

[daviedog]

Spent half hour looking for a renegade schemo. No luck, so maybe your amp tech is smart, not lazy. Lot of people will only work with schemo on a 'strange' or complicated piece. But for madmen like me, my process of elimination take.

You did the effects return thing. Output section ok.
You are not blowing fuses. Power supply ok. This is a costly fix.
You are not losing signal. You have continuity. Good welds.
Only thing left is preamp. I'm staggered that pre amp tube didn't totally fix.
Things to look for.
1 tube sockets.
2 input jack
3 gain pot
4 resisters have hissey fits. Yet metal film should be very quiet.

Far less likely.
1 bypass cap/ k resister. I've never seen one fail. More like tone tweak territory.
2 coupling caps. Block d/c from signal path.

Cost to replace all above parts 20$. Bench time, about 90 minutes.

Could it be anything else? Most likely not. But......someone coluld have put a spell on it!

 

[Lucky Legs]

Daviedog, thanks once again for your amazing generosity to help me get to the bottom of this:
1) Amp tech was lazy, he missed (after 4 days at his shop) V1 blown...says it all... My 'tube supplier' is a skilled amp tech himself, but to your point I already asked him if he would be prepared to iron it out for me, he said no (kindly)...which I suspect is mostly just about his retirement desires (no headaches wanted)... BUT I'll keep working on him (I've emailed him your suggested areas to check, await his reply)...Interestingly, FYI, he mentioned (at a gig the other night) the very day after looking at my RENEGADE someone else brought to him their REBEL Egnater with "exactly the same problem"... I've asked him to keep me posted on its outcome... I also quizzed him whether he thought the last remaining noise (albeit 50% improved from the preamp refit mentioned in my previous post) might be due to the remaining 2 x Tung-Sols (v2 and V3) and he said it might be worth a shot, but he warned me the Genelex Gold Lion was expensive ($55), but he said they are brilliant - I suggested I should buy one and see if either a V2 or V3 Tung-Sol swap out to Gold Lion may make any difference, and if not then I'd consider trying 2 x gold lion's...trouble its that's expensive guesswork (he concurred)... your thoughts?
2) Someone, somewhere, has to have the schematic for the Renegade...???...or is that trade secret stuff (Bruce can you advise please???)??? it looks like that is key to getting *anyone* to look further at it.... I don't believe its under a spell, it sounds far too amazing (noise aside!)...
3) This may shed some further light for you - i.e. the OD channel "tight/deep" tiny toggle switch crackles a bit when switched one way or the other...My 'tube supplier' heard it but he didn't really comment, but rather just ignored it somewhat. Perhaps I should run another 'experiment' and try all the toggle switches on and off and see if that makes any difference to noise (I haven't focused on that yet)...would that help narrow down anything, or is the crackle of that switch already a giveaway sign of something??
4) My tube supplier had difficulty getting the V6 tube in (others were easy)...he said it was "very tight" (and we noticed that position affected hiss too, such that the quietest tube that worked in that position was the SVETLANA (anything else we tried there brought the hiss noise back up, although [I might add] we tried so many tubes in different sockets we lost ourselves together a couple of times, so I can't be sure it was all a 'process of elimination' but we tried to stick with that as best as possible...so here's my Q? about tube sockets - what if it is that socket (or any other socket)? - could a geek like me 'clean' them (with what?) - OR - if sockets are an identified problem must they be retrofit with a new socket?
5) Not sure if I threw this in before (?), but this amp is barely 1 year old, and never has been gigged...rarely has been on for more than 2 hours...fearing my neighbours...and hating them at the same time!

Pete