ClusterOne

This should have never left the workshop. End of the story. If i was ever thinking of getting myself custom built I would 1000 % make sure to get the luthier name from you to ensure to avoid him like a plague and would politely spread the word to warn others. Hope you get it resolved somehow to your satisfaction.

@dagrev .. i'll keep an eye on eBay thingy but my capabilities do not even match 1% of what i've got right at the moment in terms of gear That tiny Warwick goes off onto eBay today, GK 400RB head was part of that combo just under the desk (an awesome/killer amp to be honest), i likely sell that Rootmaster 500 Evo so i can get ABM if i see one round the corner for good money & so i can make use of that stash of about 20 ECC 83/12AX7 and some ECC803..

@spyder If I understand you correctly it is the circuit that is responsible for (or determines)how the given valve sounds- that makes perfect sense but essentially the valve attributes to it too as otherwise the circuit would sound the same with any valve? Thinking of it - Being it the easiest thing (valve) to swap in order to get the better/different sound out of amp - that’s not that bad ,,economy,, as if one would be swapping amps to get the better sound out of one valve.. 😁 Should stop following this post as now i am about to start thinking of getting myself ABM or any amp with valve in it to see for myself (i only have hifi valve amp and never the time to listen to the music and stash of many ECC83 or 12AX7)- not good for my wallet.. Btw - anyone with opinion on Brimar valves?

Hello, Funny enough, looks like i am not the only one somehow feeling that the old gear is ,,the thing,,.. I have accumulated few bass heads lately since i moved away from,,headphone,, silent practice (Zoom B1 Four) to fully fledged bass heads & cabs.. In the order i got these: Warwick Gnome iPro v2 Trace Elliot GP7SM 150W Ashdown RM 500 EVO and latest acquisition GK 400RB III 15” combo. I can for sure say that Trace Elliot is great sounding (to me) and what surprises me (bear in mind i am forever newbie and not really experienced in amps as such) it can push low end very nice and clean without being pushed hard on overall volume. Simply said at low volume it can by loud in terms of low end without breaking sweat or I don’t know how to explain it.. Found out by using ,,shape,, button and generally mucking about with graphic eq etc. Sounds fab for measly £55 i paid for it though had to drive for 2 hours each way.. Ashdown sounds good too. The GK 400RB III - for that brief time i played with it yesterday evening i can say this combo (15” speaker) is just from another planet… Everything that i said about Trace Elliot applies here, the sound is obviously different so i am not going to say it’s better the Trace as this is highly personal opinion to everyone. The cherry on the top is the cooling fan - it doesn’t spin if there is no need for it.. So dead quiet, actually I need to find out how to push the amp to see if it kicks in at all.. Heavy as hell though 😁 Warwick amazing at it’s size but absolutely no match to TE never mind GK in terms of impression you get from how it sounds. Fantastic thing though given it’s A5 in size and just over an inch thick, very quiet fan. Moral story: If i was pushed to keep one or two it would be definitely: 1:GK 2:TE 3:Ash 4:Warwick There is something in the old iron, it’s just the feeling that you can open it up and actually see what is wrong with it rather than shrugging the shoulders and bin it.. If it is old & heavy it must be good.. 👍 😁

Hi, Just spotted this on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/167HdLzW7L/? Surely, for £150 it’s like for free i guess..

Hi, Dagrev’s amp had a nasty buzz, didn’t sound hissing to me. Have you got a spare valve? I don’t have any bass amps with valve pre amp but i do have valve hifi amp and I remember buying Electroharmonix ECCs 83 for a phono pre amp only to find out they were noisy like a ,ehm, f*ck.. (compared to others..) Got another pair of ECC 83 = hissing gone.

…Just an update about the fan replacement .. While new fan is sort of quieter on other hands it’s internal parts (bearing system etc) emit different sound when spinning.. Simply said while it is about 5 decibels quieter (used some iphone app to measure db levels before & after) at the end i now can hear more of it’s bearing noise (higher pitch) then the airflow noise if it makes sense. Good experiment but to be honest not really worth taking the outcome into consideration.. So unless the fan is indeed either about to fail or whinging then no point replacing it unless you like to tinker with the stuff.. Btw, the RS Component fan is actually Orion fan..

As for Jon Snell - when i was sorting out my hifi valve amp I mentioned previously - in my thread on diyaudio.com, he actually advised on the improvements I could do to protect the transformers, what valves would be fine to use instead of the EL34 etc.. I just dug out that thread and among these recommendations he mentioned he had been service engineer for over 45 years… Definitely a gentleman who knows his trade..

Hi, If you are comfortable with soldering iron then de-solder the transformer winding wires from wherever these are attached to. Check for shortage between primary & secondary winding too - in my hifi valve amp one of the secondary transformers went to heaven for that reason - very rare failure i was told but nothing I could do about it (fault itself).🤦‍♂️ If the transformers are fine then the fault is obviously somewhere else, just a common sense and look for any wire detached or anything that looks burnt out.. That Mullard ECC83 is indeed worth few quid, don’t rub it clean as if there is a code printing on it it rubs off easily and actually this code can tell what year the tube was ,,born,, etc.. Wish i had this, fingers itching.. I hope though that the fault has nothing to do with transformers as that is the most expensive component here.. (bar the tubes if any of these are causing it but then any cheap new production tubes would do for the purpose of troubleshooting ).

@dagrev by any coincidence - you don’t have any pedals in chain, even if turned off/disengaged but still fed by power supply? I noticed just today that my few pedals somehow cause this sort of interference resulting in such buzz very similar to yours. I normally have my bass plugged directly into amp but it was just tonight i poked around my pedals and all of sudden got this buzz but it died as soon as i unplugged the pedal’s power supply from mains..(the power supply is a proper one, brand new, some Harley Benton for about £65 with hundreds of great reviews so i f*ck wonder now).. Will have a look at how to trace the culprit as i have few ideas why that might be.. Btw, apologies to everyone else, we should have been posting this in some ,, troubleshooting,, section..

Electrical interference in live line or electromagnetic interference are invisible so we can’t know what/where the source is unless trouble shooting it like this.. Unplugging everything but amp may help to see.. Applies for the rest of the house.Never know. I love to overthink you know. 🤦‍♂️ Back in the good old days of CRT TVs and two stroke mopeds riding by your house, sometimes you could tell before it could be heard 😁 due to f*cked capacitor in moped’s ignition 🤦‍♂️😁 And to be honest sometime it may depend on the time of the day as the source of this (interference) may be even outside your premises.. Entirely possible that less buzz is generated at e.g midnight.. Let’s see what happens when trying it somewhere else..

@dagrev btw that sound sample you posted sounds to me like 50HZ from mains… If you plug the cable in but do not plug guitar, what does it do? Does the buzz go away? Because it may be that the pickups are picking up some noise from poorly filtered dc adapter or something. Funny enough, yesterday i got myself some cheap cab and had to place it somewhere so as a result my bass is now picking up (pickups more precisely) some electromagnetic interference from the Warwick gnome i have sat on the top of it because it is practically right in front of me about a meter & half from pickups. Not as noisy as in your sample but i also noticed when i moved around with the bass the noise disappeared or faded away. I mean I should have known better but it didn’t click 🤦‍♂️😁 So that’s normal, in sense you can use the bass to track where the interference is coming from by following the signal.. By any chance do you have any power adapters (dc power supplies) plug in while using the amp? The other day i had cheapo dc supply that feeds my pedals transmitting an interference much worse than the one in your example. And I accidentally found out when unplugged it from mains..

I may be well drifting into the BS territory but my way of thinking is as follows: Dodgy input socket? Is its ground connection ok? By that i mean ground connection on PCB at the input socket terminal up to the end of the lead/cable once that is plugged in..Eventually the continuity of the ground all through the preamp.. Input lead/cable acting like an antenna - picking up some stupid signal - here i would take whole thing (amp) to a friend’s house to see if the same issue persists. But then i believe you must have been using different amp in the same room at some point so it would be pretty obvious if the other amp was doing the same. And obviously I would try different lead/cable .. However, if you can send it back for a refund then I would do that given that any further investigation may render the guarantee invalid..