Troubleshooting Tube Guitar Amps

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name's Floyd and I'm talking to you today from theacousticmusician.com in Sandy, Utah, and we're talking today how to troubleshoot a tube amplifier. When you get a tube amplifier, tubes, or case or what, what runs the amplifier, and usually the number one thing that will go bad is the tube. If it's a pre-amp tube, the amplifier consists of pre-amp tubes and power tubes. If it's a pre-amp tube things kind of get ringy, and sound almost like a bell ringing, kind of squealy like feedback from a microphone. Of course if it's a power tube, you don't have any power. The easiest way to see if it's a bad tube, is tap on a tube. Now the one thing you do not want to use is something metallic use something like a chopstick or a wood piece but nothing that is metallic. I have to reaffirm, nothing that is made out of metal. And then what you can do is fire up that amplifier, turn it on, and then you can tap on those tubes with that stick. If you have a tube, and you tap on it, and you see a light show, that's a bad tube. Or if you tap on it and it makes a strange sound, that's a bad tube. And hence the same thing with power tubes. You know if they're burning differently, if one's brighter than the other one, or the other one's darker than the other one, that's usually your bad power tube, or if it doesn't light up at all."