HELP! Renegade problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter mmorse
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mmorse

mmorse

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Got a Renegade head from a fellow rig talker on Thursday. Replaced all the pre tubes and the 34s. Played it for 3 hours yesterday and it played and sounded great. When I went to play it today, the OD channel was dead. No sound at all. The clean channel is fine. Replaced the tubes in V3-4 thinking one of those might have died even though they looked fine. Still no OD channel. Are there internal channel fuses? Anybody venture a guess on why the second channel suddenly stopped working?
 
Are you using the same power tube blend for both channels? There are different fuses for each set of power tubes. Try panning the blend to far left and right on channel two to test the power section.
 
Power section is fine. Loop is fine, reverb is fine. Just no red channel. The red light comes on but no sound at all.
 
Do you have the loop activated on Ch 2 with nothing in the loop? Does changing the tube mix on Ch2 do anything?
 
Did you check the bias and re-bias when you replaced the EL34s?
 
Resonant Alien":4ajsjgvu said:
Did you check the bias and re-bias when you replaced the EL34s?
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yes I did. As I said, channel 1 works fine with the tube mix all the way to one side or the other and all points in between.
 
Resonant Alien":v79ztpi3 said:
Do you have the loop activated on Ch 2 with nothing in the loop? Does changing the tube mix on Ch2 do anything?
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no on both counts.
 
One thing I forgot to mention. If I turn the volume up in Ch2, I get a hum coming through the speakers. Similar to a ground loop type of hum. Anyone know of a repair facility in So. Cal that I could take it to?
 
I found the problem and boy do I feel dumb. Turns out it WAS a bad tube. I remember after I shut the amp down on Sat. I put in the RFTs but I didn't actually play the amp until Sun. when it would not work. What threw me off was I then pulled the RFTs and put two other tubes I had and one or both of those must have been bad as Ch2 still would not work. What are the odds of that happening! So tonight, as one final test I put 2 of the Egnater tubes back in and CH2 worked. I then put one RFT back in and it worked. When I put the other one in, Ch2 stopped working. So I replaced it with one of the Raytheons I had put in on Sat. and the amp works fine.

What had me stumped was the last time I had used the RFTs or the GT 12ax7Ms, they all worked perfectly. So just sitting collecting dust, a couple have gone bad. More likely they went bad when current hit them.

Thought I better clear that up lest people get the wrong idea about Egnater products. The amp sounds great! The only caveat I would say is that for people who have a Renegade, you really haven't heard it until you replace those Sovtek pres it ships with. Of course, it helps to replace them with tubes that actually work! :doh:
 
Glad you found the problem. I had a similar incident recently. Had a Renegade with channel 2 dead. It was obvious to me the tube was bad but when I replaced it with a brand new one it still didn't work. Checked erveything only to find out the brand new tube was also bad. You just never know.
 
bruce egnater":c69v5p22 said:
Glad you found the problem. I had a similar incident recently. Had a Renegade with channel 2 dead. It was obvious to me the tube was bad but when I replaced it with a brand new one it still didn't work. Checked erveything only to find out the brand new tube was also bad. You just never know.
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Yeah, you just don't think that you're going to replace a bad tube with another one. But all is well now and I'm quite impressed with the Renegade!
 
Tube quality is so "iffy", you can never be sure of anything. That is why we choose the tubes we do. The Sovtek 12AX7WA, Sovtek 5881 and Ruby EL34 and 6V6 have proven to be the most reliable in our testing. Lot's of folks knock those brands for not being "cool" but we have tried the others with, in some cases (JJ 12AX7??), disasterous results. Just because a tube is new, or in your case old, does not guarantee anything. Always keep spares and hope they work when the need arises.
 
bruce egnater":3cz2x182 said:
Tube quality is so "iffy", you can never be sure of anything. That is why we choose the tubes we do. The Sovtek 12AX7WA, Sovtek 5881 and Ruby EL34 and 6V6 have proven to be the most reliable in our testing. Lot's of folks knock those brands for not being "cool" but we have tried the others with, in some cases (JJ 12AX7??), disasterous results. Just because a tube is new, or in your case old, does not guarantee anything. Always keep spares and hope they work when the need arises.
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As a manufacturer I totally understand why you choose the tubes you do. First and foremost, they have to work. But, to my ears, the Sovteks aren't very good sounding ax7s. I must have close to 50 old ax7s and I just happened to select one that was bad. TWICE! I should get a hold of a tester and go through them all and dump any that are bad. Funny thing is that until now, something like this has never happened. And I've done a lot of tube rolling in a lot of amps. But, I guess there's a first time for everything. :confused:
 
I'm friends with a couple of guys who build amps locally and both of them also use the basic sovteks for the same reason bruce mentioned. They just always (almost always) work. And one of the guys made a good point that chances are most guys are going to experiment with different tubes anyways. The only thing that matters is that they work when the customer gets the amp.

I'm personally a huge fan of the ruby EL34B-STR's. I've got 2 amps with them and 2 amps with their KT88s and never had a failure. I love their preamp tubes as well. The AC5's and AC7's are about the best current production tube in my opinion when it comes to sound and consistency with tone. I've also (out of about 40 of them) never had one fail.
 
I do believe the Ruby 34B-STR is a Chinese tube. A Shuguang. I have a pair of Shug 34Bs and think they are great new production tubes. Also have a pair of Valve Art (Shuguang again) KT88s. Haven't thought about using them in my Renegade though. Might look into that.
 
yeah I'm curious how the amp sounds with KT88's. I've got 2 other amps that were EL34 amps that are now KT88 amps and I love them both more with the 88's. better punch and cleanliness overall.
 
88s will give you more headroom for sure, not to mention more heft.
 
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