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Post by anamicableamoeba on Jul 5, 2007 12:44:12 GMT -5
Any musicians out there wanna talk about gear?
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Post by anamicableamoeba on Jul 11, 2007 1:52:07 GMT -5
I'll start: (About a 6-year old Marshall JCM 2000 TSL Head):
My amp and footswitch were FINE until practice on Friday, when strange things started happening with the FX loop and the footswitch. Wanna know everything wrong with my amp?
1. Both PLASTIC clips anchoring the tips of the Effects send and return cables on FX Loop A were broken and rolling around the inside of the chassis. WTF? Why are they plastic? Why is there even an additional component clipped to the jack without being cemented in place? After years of inserting and removing 1/4 inch cables, they are going to eventually break or fall off or something. Superglued together and a temporary fix.
2. The FX Return jack on Loop B had come out of two out of four solder joints in the board. I hardly ever use this jack, so how did it come undone? Looks like someone pulled on it really damn hard. But there's hardly any solder there to begin with! Did the solder just evaporate and leave the jack flopping around? That would explain some of the mysterious buzzing noises at practice -- when it's engaged as normal, no noise. When it becomes disengaged, it buzzes like a guitar being plugged in at stage volume.
3. The footswitch cable is broken in at least three different places. This results in random channels, the reverb and the effects loop turning on and off at any given time. Since my I got my warranty replacement about four years ago, I've done nothing but take care of it. Now I've got to buy 21 feet of 6-prong midi cable and replace the bad one.
4. The Effects Loop LED is dead. All this time I thought the FX Loop wire in the footswitch cable was broken (it is in one place, but turns on and off intermittently), but the LED is out so I don't know if it's on or off to begin with. Even if it is on, it may or may not be engaged because the footswitch wire is frayed and it turns it on and off all the time. This explains random volume swells.
Look at some forums on Marshall amps and you'll see that they're plagued by the same sort of problems. Unless I become blown away by how awesome the tone is or something real damn quick, I think it's time to ebay it and get a mesa.
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Post by thehairguy on Jul 11, 2007 16:56:03 GMT -5
I love my Marshall, I treat it like a small child and have none of the problems Tristan does. Tristan has been known to throw his into a vehicle like a sack of potatoes. I reckon throwing a Mesa would yield similar results. I love my tone, I love my amps, and I love my guitars. Yeah, its too bad Gibson seems to be turning into deuche bags though cuz it really makes me not want to buy from 'em.
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Post by anamicableamoeba on Jul 12, 2007 17:53:53 GMT -5
It should be stated that Sean has two JCM 2000 Heads. The one he uses on stage is newer, the older one (same year as mine) has all three channel LEDs on at the same time and won't pass a signal. And how many footswitches have you been through before this one?
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Post by thehairguy on Jul 12, 2007 21:24:34 GMT -5
It does too pass a signal, sounds fine, just doesn't switch right. I bet its just a loose solder joint somewhere. Besides do ya know what happened right before that broke. We were playing at Eck's and I was running late so I semi-threw my head into my car, in much the same manner as you do thinking to myself, "Fuck it, Tristan does it all the time and I'm late!" Now I will say I hate those god damned footswitches, I thought we were talking about the amp here, but I hate the footswitches. Not only are they prone to breaking due to the fine hair wires within the cable. (By the way T, I have the schematic for which wire goes to which pin if you need em. If you do fix that I've been thnking the best mod would be ordering another female DIN jack installing it in the actual footswitch and getting a nice monster lifetime warrantied male-male DIN cable.) But they are also completely incompatible with any MIDI or 1/4" rack switching system, which I plan on getting in the near future in order to simplify my rig as well as loosing the giant fuckin' footboard in front of me on stage. No matter what, because of my footswitch, I will always need to have at least two footboards in front of me. Until of course I can get someone else to do my switching for me which would be like a dream come true because of the freed up space and because of the fact that it would be one less thing to think about up there. (singing, playing, switching my channels and effects in time without looking down, lame!) If anyone would like to volunteer for the position of learning the intracacies of my footswitching on stage for each song we play, and would like to attend all of our shows and sit off to the side doing my footswitching please respond! lol! With that said I've had my current switch for nearly three years without a hitch after taking Tritans suggestion of folding the cable as it comes in the box instead of wrapping them like I do all my other cables that aren't pieces of shit. Though that is quite a pain in the ass. Also I now have it in a snake which means for a loose wrap. I also think they changed that shitty cable out for a slightly beefier one on the later models.
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Post by anamicableamoeba on Jul 19, 2007 14:22:15 GMT -5
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Post by erick on Apr 22, 2008 19:52:49 GMT -5
anamicableamoeba, where did you get the schematic for the tsl footswith?
E
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