Amps Hod Rod Deluxe in da shop.

CapnDenny1

Student Of The Blues
I bought this a few months back from a Facebook Marketplace add. The PO listed just the cab forsake to use as an extension speaker. I have a half dozen amp chassis that need a cab so I am always on the lookout for and empty cab.

After talking with him he said he had the amp but it was broken. He said he tried to fix it, but the problem was it wouldn't switch the relay to go from clean to gain. So I ended buying the amp and cab.

Upon first examination it was pretty obvious the filter caps were leaking. White goo was coming out of one and the other had some dried white stuff coming out. I just happened to have the large electrolytics on hand, so before even testing it, I replaced the 4 large filter caps.

I am trying learn my son the mysteries of amp repair, so I let him replace the caps. He suggested just cutting the old ones out, and making small loops to attach the new cap to. That way he wouldn't have to remove the pcb from the chassis. It's a bit of a challenge in a HRD. It also prevents having the traces lift when de-soldering the old ones. Fender pcb's are horrible, and the traces lift just by looking at them.

Untitled by Dennis Kelley, on Flickr

So that went well, and we plugged it into a speaker and the amp basically works fine. Except it is stuck in the gain and more gain mode. It won't switch to clean. So I troubleshot it and determined the problem was the pedal jack in the amp. See video. In the video I amp pushing slightly on one of the terminals of the switch. It may have been bad solder, but the switch wasn't acting right either, so I ordered a new one along with a new Reverb tank, and tank bag and cable with RCA plugs.

You can see in the video how they get a single 2 wire cable to do 2 separate functions. Channel switch, and the More Gain function.



Parts will be here in a few days. It just shows that trying to replace a relay that doesn't switch isn't always correct. In this case it was the pedal jack that was bad.
 

CapnDenny1

Student Of The Blues
I got the new jack in and the channel switching works great now. I also replaced the Master pot. It was the wrong style and the wrong value?

So I bought a full set of new JJ tubes, because they are cheap. Some people like them, not me. I think they are a bit edgy, but will probably work well in this amp.

So I powered it up, and there was a loud hum when I turned up the volume. I turned it off and made sure I had it hooked up correctly. Powered it back up and it was not humming loudly? So I got my chopstick out and started wiggling stuff while it was powered up. It got crazy loud when I touched tube V1. Just to be sure I tried another tube there, but it was the same, very very touch sensitive.

There are two likely causes of that , a bad or corroded tube socket, or broken solder on the tube socket to pcb connection. I resoldered the connections and cleaned the contacts with contact cleaner.

I put the original tube back in and no noise. I could even wiggle the V1 tube with no breakup or noise! Cool!

But then I wiggled V2 and it was WW3 again! So tomorrow I will de-oxit the rest of the tube sockets.

It's getting closer!
 

CapnDenny1

Student Of The Blues
I finally got back to working on this HRD. I had to set my shop back up in our basement. I haven't been able to work down there for over a year, since before I was so sick last spring. It was a mess. I did some work in the kitchen, but my wife has some crazy idea that the excellent amp repair table in the kitchen is actually for eating at?

I tried cleaning the v2 tube again and it was worse than ever. The slightest touch and major noise and pops. So I took the tube pcb out and was going to replace that socket. But when I examined it I found cold solder on one of the pins. I was sure I already reflowed those tubes? It was evident I did V1 and V3, but not V2.

Oh well, a quick solder job on the tube socket pins and silence. Well, it was silent when it was supposed to be. But it works great now. I even found the Reverb tank and verified that works as well. I also have a footswitch somewhere in a box to go with it.

Probably use the Fender speaker from the The Twin which only has one good speaker,

It's great to be back in my shop, able to work again. I'm only able to work a couple hours, but it's cool to be able to do that again.
 
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