Well its a long story, suffice to say that I took my amp to a tech to fix an issue I had with my Engl Fireball, no output signal on the Gain channel. He said it was a couple of capacitors that had blown, blah blah. Anyway, got it back today and hooked it up, only to realise after I had turned it on that I hadn't connected the head to my cab (you can imagine how stupid I feel, as I check this every time I play normally). Anyway, the problem is still the same, nice strong signal on the clean channel, works a-ok. No output on the Gain channel. Have I fried a transformer?? Would the amp still work if a transformer was blown? It was only on but unhooked for less than a minute, maybe 40 secs or so. Or has the tech not done his job right and it has nothing to do with my stupidity? Please help a dejected feeling guitarist out.

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It was your stupidity. The lack of the load blew the amp, i'm surprised the fuse didn't go, but if cleans work, you're alright in that sense. Take it back to the tech guy wearing a mask, so he doesn't look at you like a retard.
(only reason why i know this, i did the exact same thing, feel your pain brosiph)

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transformer doesnt blow in the matter of seconds, it first has to heat up to egg frying temperature and have the metal bits inside melt. Once the bits melt, your tranny is considered blown.
Oh, and if your Output transformer doesnt work, you get no sound because nothing is transforming the relatively low tube current into high current speaker driving sound. If your power transformer doesnt work, nothing works, because nothing in your amp is getting power.

Sounds like your amp tech either A) didnt do his job. or B) just did a really shitty job. Punch him in the face and get back to us

OR the problem could be some wires are disconnected between the input and the gain channel, or gain channel and phase inverter... so just no current is going though to the poweramp.

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+1. If the problem is the same, the tech didnt do his job. No tranny = no sound.

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+1 The problem has to be in the preamp(or between the preamp and poweramp) if you're getting normal sounds from one channel and the other is acting up. There is no logical reason the tranny would cause this.

Take it back to your tech and inform him he did something wrong and that he needs to actually fix it before he gives it back to you and charges you money. If he wont do it for the price of on the house, find a different tech because he's clearly a scam artist.


-1

Did you even read the post?

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You thought since it wasnt conected to a cab it would have blew? is that possible?

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Cool, you guys are awesome. Like I said I hoped that because it was only 30-40secs it didn't do much damage. All I knew was that without a cab the load doesn't go anyway, so I wasn't sure whether it was instantaneous meltdown or not. Well I'll take it back tomorrow morning asap and get him to fix it, quick too, I had to wait nearly two weeks for him to do nothing this time. Problem is I don't know who else to go to, and they could be just as crap :S Thanks again guys, eased my mind.

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I cant fucking stand it when you have to deal with people like this. I mean, did he even bother to turn it on and check? Its his job!

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Yes. I took my kahler to be set up when i bought it and when i got the guitar back home it had 2 dead frets. I dont know who to take it to for stuff really.

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Tell me about it. I took an amp in because it was humming unsually bad like there was a horrid grounding issue. I went to pick it up and plugged it back in right there in the store and nothing had changed. "Hey man, couldn't help but notice you didn't do anything..."

With tube amps it's very bad to not have a "load" connected. It stresses the power section and in severe cases it can blow your transformer. But 30-40 seconds shouldn't reach that point.

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Ok, well the tech called and said it was all good to go. I stayed with him for 20mins or so this morning while he had a look. He knows his electronics, I guess that maybe he didn't quite understand what the problem was originally, i.e. he just changed the tubes and made sure that channel 1 was working ok as that was originally crackly as hell when I took it in, its all good now. I'm about to go get it so fingers crossed for channel 2! Thanks again peeps.

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Haha funny! I have had the same problem twice. I just had a busted relay though, and the other time a ribbon cable failed on me.

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Bingo man, it was a busted relay. Its all fixed now and I'm pretty happy. Plus he didn't charge any extra. He has put a brace of Mullard 12ax7's in there, damn they have a ton of gain, I'm literally running the preamp level on 1-2 So they are coming out tomorrow, plus they aren't very tight, although they still sound really raw and heavy, I'll mess around with a couple of tubes in V1 to see what suits me.

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Yeah, i run a Mullard in V2 and i love how it adds some "dirt" to it, they're really raw sounding as you say, which i like.

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