r_vw52

1 hour ago, Bill Fitzmaurice said:

Do you know how to drain the power supply caps and why you have to?

As I said, a good buddy of mine is very clued up on this sort of thing, so I'll be handing it over to him and learning as he goes. I really only wanted to know what was causing the problem in the first place so I had something to go on. I didn't want to just hand over a faulty amp (to him or to a tech) and not have a clue about what the problem could be.

10 hours ago, BassmanPaul said:

My first question would be what experience do you have servicing solid state electronics. Just 'cos you've owned the amp for ages doesn't mean that you can play fast and loose inside the amp. in general doing so just causes more damage than already exists. Do you even have a clue what to look for?

I have basic knowledge of amps, I'm more of a guitar tech. But a good buddy of mine services and repairs his own amps, both SS and tube, so I'm sure between us we can fix the issue. I understand that as long as the amp has been powered down correctly there shouldn't be too much in the way of carefully diagnosing the problem.

17 minutes ago, nilebodgers said:

Get the amp looked at by an electronics tech pronto. Speaker cone displacement like that sounds like a DC fault on the amp output.

I was hoping to take the amp apart tonight and have a look inside. I believe it's a solid state amp, otherwise I'd assume it was one of the tubes playing up.

Right, so I've had this old Peavey Century 200 (4ohm) head sitting around for AGES, finally the other day I decided to give it some company by purchasing a TC Electronic 2x10 (8ohm) cab.

Because the Peavy is 6,000 years old and the cab is pretty modern, they both have different connection plugs (Peavey is standard 6.5mm jack output while the cab is Speakon input).

So I buy the right cable to connect them, turn on the power and everything seems ok. A short while later however I start getting this almighty thudding sound, like a heartbeat on steroids. It doesn't matter which dials I turn on the amp, even with everything dialled off, I still get the thudding sound. I look at the speakers and they're about to jump out of the cab.

Here's the weird part though, when I tilt the head 45 degrees, the thudding stops completely and everything functions as it should. I should also mention there is quite a lot of heat, I'm sensing this is a bad thing as I've never had an amp kick out so much heat.

I'm hoping someone can help me understand what's going on before I ultimately burn down my house.