Laney speaker change – VC30

laney-speaker-change

This Laney speaker change job came down from York last week. The Laney VC30s are great amps but sadly are supplied with quite bland speakers. My customer asked me to fit a Celestion V30 to replace the stock HH driver.

It’s owned by a professional guitarist who bought it as a spare – unfortunately the amp also had a bad case of ‘snap, crackle and pop’ so whilst en route to gig he brought it to me for investigation and a speaker change.

The speaker change was a success. Because I’ve had experience of microphonic howls in Laney amps, I was initially concerned about the V30’s greater magnet size and proximity to the valves, but this turned out to work well. You can hear the results of the speaker change below, a great improvement!

In another Laney speaker change, I had good results with an Eminence Legend, I’m afraid the audio isn’t as good on this one!

The crackling issue turned out to be the phase inverter valve, one if two 12AX7s which failed in my valve tester.

If you have a Laney VC30 speaker change or repair, drop me a message and we’ll bring your amp to life!

Mesa Boogie Bass amp Repair

Mesa Boogie Bass 400+ Repair

This mesa boogie bass amp repair had the highest power valve count I’ve seen. The amp uses no less than twelve 5881 6L6 valves!

Like the recent fender amp repair this valve amp was blowing fuses. Also like the fender repair, the failure was down to a damaged power tube. Two in fact.

Much is made of Mesa Boogie’s insistence upon the use of mesa branded valves on guitar forums and these guys come in for quite a lot of stick. You can read Randall Smith’s defence of the idea here. My opinion is that the principle is reasonable for the majority of non technical users.

In this case, the amp had been fitted with Sovtek valves. Aside from the two failures many of the valves no longer matched well.

By testing mesa boogie valves in my valve tester I know what non mesa valves are within mesa parameters for use in their amps. I could tell that 4 of the sovteks were out of spec, meaning that 6 of the 12 needed replacing. After completing this simple task the amp was fixed.

If you have a mesa boogie bass amp repair please contact me via the contact page.