Epiphone Electar Tube 30

I just got one of those amps that didn't work, after a little tlc it now works as it should but doesn't sound great.
it distorts quite easily and the distortion sounds like a cheap fuzzbox. Are there any mods you could suggest
Many Thanks
francois

Can you please explain the 'TLC' that you performed on this amp to get it working?

Nothing fancy just checking the basics, reseating all the tubes, cleaning up the contacts.

ubxf said:

I just got one of those amps that didn't work, after a little tlc it now works as it should but doesn't sound great.
it distorts quite easily and the distortion sounds like a cheap fuzzbox. Are there any mods you could suggest
Many Thanks
francois

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It's got all it takes to make a pretty good amp, except maybe the speaker. Can you test the amp with another speaker, one that you know sounds good?
The topology is unusual from left to right, so it may be difficult to make it right.
I think they tried to be clever and cheap with the distortion circuit.
As an evaluation experiment, I would bypass V1a entirely; disconnect C32 and R16, connect directly the wiper of the gain pot to the grid of V2a.

" except maybe the speaker" yes sir you are correct !!! with a good speaker it is sounding ok. i will now move on to your suggestion of bypassing the second half of the first tube, do i need to worry about D1 and D2 ? Many Thanks for your help

ubxf said:

" except maybe the speaker" yes sir you are correct !!! with a good speaker it is sounding ok. i will now move on to your suggestion of bypassing the second half of the first tube, do i need to worry about D1 and D2 ? Many Thanks for your help

Click to expand...

I would think D1 & D2 don't influence the sound of most passive electric guitars significantly. You have to bang pretty hard a guitar with humbuckers to reach 700mV peak. You may try and disconnect them once the other issues are sorted out.

Strange... 1 M gain pot loaded with a 2K resistor? (R7)

I finally had a chance to bypass V1b and it is night and day now it works : ) the sound is now limited by the quality of the components and transformer but the bad muffled grainy sound is gone. Many thanks for your 2 great suggestions