I remember a certain “tech” from the Deep South of USA (not Uncle Doug, he is absolutely qualified and a legend!) on RUclips systematically destroy a Mesa Boogie because of a fundamental lack of basic electronics knowledge, in particular ESR. He even did an infrared scan showing the coupling caps which he had replaced were hot! He condemned the customers amp to the garbage because of a probable “leakage on the PC board”. When I politely pointed this out and suggested there may be a gap in his component changeout strategy and assumption that the new and/ or other components were ok, he responded with a rebuke that was so over the top about my conception it was funny. While your meticulous approach can sometimes add to the length of the video, it demonstrates an ethic and customer care that is high value. Keep up the great work!
Watched the video and many more, yes the tech you speak of does shotgun components and then finds a broken wire or cold solder joint, still like the guy as an outspoken person.
@@noel3422 Nothing wrong with being outspoken. Those who choose to teach electronics repairs to others by sharing their techniques have some responsibility to be competent both in the manual techniques as well as the diagnosis and resolution. It’s ok that not all techs have deep knowledge of electronics. It’s better to be willing to receive respectful feedback and assistance graciously. Clearly I was one of a number who made the mistake of trying.
God I wish you had posted this a year ago when my Mark III had the exact problem. It took me forever to figure it out. I don’t have an amp tech anywhere near me, so I took some time to learn how to fix things myself during the COVID lockdown. Glad to see you replaced the parts topside and didn’t pull that board.
Love your process as you determine the faults..So much to learn and clear and precise instruction..Man you're so good at this stuff..Great watching all the vids..Ed..uk..😀
I like all your videos a lot, I'm really glad I found the ones on Mesa. I am completely stumped as to how they can charge over $2k for a 25W 12 inch combo amp, let alone with this record of shoddy build. I'm fine with shit being cheap, but if it's gonna be cheap for them, it better damn well be cheap for me. That thing with the fake fins....let me pick my jaw up off the floor.
Good information and sequential analysis. Follow the salmon upstream until it spawns. As it happens I've got a Mesa to work on that has a similar problem. I've given myself two weeks to clean up all my messes.
With guitar on me lap I totally zone out as I listen to you think out loud... God bless man, it's great and amazing and quite entertaining for this ultra nerd (happens all the time BTW) so thanx mang...
Mesas your favorite. Someone I know was good friends with the mesa guy. He also had the 3rd dumble amplifier ever made. It was a bass amp, and was gifted to him by Howard dumble. The story goes that the guy I'm talking about got one of the first sunn amps. Apparently the sunn amp guy was trying to make a louder bass amp that could compete with fender twins. Apparently it was 1000 dollars back in the day, so closer to 10,000. The guy I'm talking about is a bass player, so he had a lot of opportunities to play with a bunch of people. The mesa guy was actually this guy's drummer in his band. Anyways Howard dumble saw him with the amp and in about a month just went up to him and put down an amp case. It was the 3rd dumble ever made. The biggest kick was that it was free from the man itself. He sold it, but took a ton of photos of the board so he could get part values. This was before dumble started getting paranoid about his amp designs and started gooping.
Well, I don’t think I’ve ever heard any amp repairman say they enjoy working on a Mesa. Seems to be a trend. And the fact that Randall Smith is designing the “next generation” of Gibson amps doesn’t exactly fill me with optimism. I’m surprised that nobody has come out with a new Lab Series amp. B.B. sure made his sound great.
So did Ty Tabor. Some years back I looked into making a Lab preamp for a client. Wasn't cost effective but I got far enough to work out the filters. The main hitch was the limiting circuit used an unobtanium chip with no sub available, so I would have had to make a discrete version of what else in that chip. Which would have been huge and then probably would have needed months of tweaking to get right. Probably something for the modeling/impulse guys, not old analog fogies like me (I was in my late 30s then, but a fogie prodigy).
As an aside from a guy who does a lot of cooking and therefore much vegetable chopping, the "onion" usually rots in the center where you can't see it! Like a dried out filter cap or leaky/shorted coupling cap perhaps....which is why meters and measurements are necessary. Also wondering, Lyle, did you have to pull the PCB to swap the caps and grid leak resistors?
Excellent work! I wonder how high that shorted cap pulled the raw bias supply up for the other tube? The 250 was prolly a voltage divider between the plate resistor and the (now) 80k bias leak and bias network. Apparently the bias supply cap survived.
It was something I checked, but the raw bias stayed at -52V even when the bad components were in place. With -52V on one side and 240V on the other that bias leak resistor had about 290V across it. I haven't looked it up but I would expect it to be rated for 250-300V, so that explains it's failure. I think it saved the bias supply. I do want to change the bias filter caps, pending owner approval.
I always wanted a Mesa, until about 7 years ago and another channel was ranting about the difficulties with them and Mesa's terrible Customer service. I'll just stick with my Marshalls.
I think every tech in the world hates working on Mesa ...I hated working there lol....I ran over a section of that heat sink with a forklift...crushed it up real good.....got fired..
Unfortunately is it not only Mesa where i see underrated coupling caps. It is really a no brainer and just a matter of cents and there wouldn't be as much excessive damage to the amp as it was. With the prices up in Aluminium i guess they will never again put a fake heatsink on.
wow, every video you make is like discovery channel haha. anyway, i have a redplating mesa boogie electradyne, can i have an accurate negative voltage reading in the two 220k bias resistors without disconnecting the resistors or the coupling caps? i suspect it has leaky caps as well as i measured the screen resistor and its fine. thanks!
One of the most overrated amps Ive ever worked on. Mesa Engineering, my ass…. Great video and I hope it’ll help others who can’t afford the high cost, and that’s if they’ll find a reasonable tech…..👍
The crazy thing about all this is that that stupid and unnecessary heat sink on the back of the amplifier probably costs as much or more than the difference in cost of upgrading the coupling caps from 400 to 630 Volt ratings.
@@PsionicAudio , yeah, I figured; most electronic components tend to be relatively inexpensive, especially when you're buying in bulk, but mechanicals like chassis' and metal work and heat sinks and such tend to be quite expensive, especially if you're not buying something off the shelf or off the rack and you need it custom made to a certain dimension.
"...wheels within wheels in a spiral array...". Rush fan eh? I repaired amps for over twenty years and finally couldn't take the shitty design of most amps anymore. Nicely done.
To my understanding the satellite is not a "guitar amp", it is meant for line level signals. FWIW. It is to be used as a slave for a two amp setup, post efx-loop. Am I wrong?
It is more than that. Haven't drawn it out but it has an input gain stage, volume/tone ala tweed Princeton, another gain stage, then a crappy MV then a PI. The "loop" is ahead of the first gain stage, not the PI. So it wasn't really designed to be a good satellite power section.
Where you got that plastic pointer? I know I've seen them before and I can't for the life of me recall where or when or if it's actually some other tool that you repurposed
The only thing legendary about Mesa Boogie is their marketing. Yes, the Mark IIC+ was a hit, the Rectifier, ok, that was basically an SLO100 with some tweaks. But every Mesa amp I've ever played has felt stiff, cold, clinical, thin, brittle; they literally have me doubting that I want to continue playing guitar as they just feel terrible under the fingers. Anyway, not surprised Mesa Engineering and underrated components strike again, here. That heatsink looked a little pricey, wish they would have put that money into the actual components and design...oh well, typical Mesa.
Carbon composite is hygroscopic so it absorbs moisture from the air and it dries out with changes in humidity, so the value drifts around badly. As this process continues over time the resistance generally drifts high. Unless someone really really needs zero inductance resistors, there are zero reasons to use carbon comp resistors today.
As an old Tube amp tech,i simply do not understand the statement that the burnout of G2 Resistor on V1 made V2 take all the load ?.Its a fixed Bias amp.I think you have confused the placement of the powertubes placement,as the burned out one surely was the one taking the resistor out.
I don’t even know where to direct people for a quality high gain amp anymore. Even the Friedman amps are starting to look like a whole bunch of afterthoughts on the inside.
I'm consistently underwhelmed with Mesa. I owned a Mk. III and a 3-channel non-multiwatt Dual Rectifier. Both uninspiring. Not the "tone monster" as they are marketed. I'm not saying anyone is wrong for owning or liking them, but I'm sure not going to bother with Mesa in the future.
I rarely see any mesas under $1,500.00 used. I shake my head and smile, some fool gonna buy the name.and I will get the repair, or someone else will,,most over rated amps on the market
When they could have used the heatsink for heater regulators they used it for nothing . HE HAW got the reference. Look at the 65c cap rating . Bias resistor with about 1.2 watt load see why it failed. Look at the Der EE DE-5000 about 100 usd on ebay good to 2-3 % on the esr and tests at 100,120,1k,110k,100k well worth having at the price.
How, um... INTERESTING that Mesa would bother to SPEND money on a custom-machined aluminum heatsink hooked up to nothing but the buyer's eyeballs -- probably what, $3 to $7 dollars for the part? -- while SKIMPING on grid resistors in the middle of the power flow of the core amp. Based on where you buy, there is no material price difference between the cheaper 1-watt carbon composites (anywhere from $0.36 each to $0.92 each) and better 5-watt metal oxides (set of 50 of them for $12.99 on Amazon or $0.27 each).
Ain't nothing natural about the design of that Mesa however.... It's physical features are illogical rather than geological. At Boogie, the only thing set in stone is the "stupid".
I remember a certain “tech” from the Deep South of USA (not Uncle Doug, he is absolutely qualified and a legend!) on RUclips systematically destroy a Mesa Boogie because of a fundamental lack of basic electronics knowledge, in particular ESR. He even did an infrared scan showing the coupling caps which he had replaced were hot! He condemned the customers amp to the garbage because of a probable “leakage on the PC board”. When I politely pointed this out and suggested there may be a gap in his component changeout strategy and assumption that the new and/ or other components were ok, he responded with a rebuke that was so over the top about my conception it was funny. While your meticulous approach can sometimes add to the length of the video, it demonstrates an ethic and customer care that is high value. Keep up the great work!
Amazing! I would like to see the video.
Watched the video and many more, yes the tech you speak of does shotgun components and then finds a broken wire or cold solder joint, still like the guy as an outspoken person.
@@noel3422 Nothing wrong with being outspoken. Those who choose to teach electronics repairs to others by sharing their techniques have some responsibility to be competent both in the manual techniques as well as the diagnosis and resolution. It’s ok that not all techs have deep knowledge of electronics. It’s better to be willing to receive respectful feedback and assistance graciously. Clearly I was one of a number who made the mistake of trying.
I love that heatsink! It might help the under rated caps last 3-7 days longer...
God I wish you had posted this a year ago when my Mark III had the exact problem. It took me forever to figure it out. I don’t have an amp tech anywhere near me, so I took some time to learn how to fix things myself during the COVID lockdown. Glad to see you replaced the parts topside and didn’t pull that board.
Love your process as you determine the faults..So much to learn and clear and precise instruction..Man you're so good at this stuff..Great watching all the vids..Ed..uk..😀
I like all your videos a lot, I'm really glad I found the ones on Mesa. I am completely stumped as to how they can charge over $2k for a 25W 12 inch combo amp, let alone with this record of shoddy build. I'm fine with shit being cheap, but if it's gonna be cheap for them, it better damn well be cheap for me. That thing with the fake fins....let me pick my jaw up off the floor.
These were largely designed as slave amps for dual momo or steoro rigs but it's cool they shipped with a basic preamp. Sounds pretty good overdriven.
The player X analogy was legit!
I immediately thought of Racer X
Hahaha Junior Sample…. Good one Lyle yeehaw ! Watched that up here in 🇨🇦. Gordie Tapp & Don Harron we’re both born in Canada
"Hey Doc, my amp sounds like crap when I try to play through it"... Doc: "well, don't do that!".
Good information and sequential analysis. Follow the salmon upstream until it spawns. As it happens I've got a Mesa to work on that has a similar problem. I've given myself two weeks to clean up all my messes.
Lyle I got the Jr reference (decade older than you) Im so old I remember Hee Haw in primetime😉😉
With guitar on me lap I totally zone out as I listen to you think out loud...
God bless man, it's great and amazing and quite entertaining for this ultra nerd
(happens all the time BTW) so thanx mang...
Mesas your favorite. Someone I know was good friends with the mesa guy. He also had the 3rd dumble amplifier ever made. It was a bass amp, and was gifted to him by Howard dumble. The story goes that the guy I'm talking about got one of the first sunn amps. Apparently the sunn amp guy was trying to make a louder bass amp that could compete with fender twins. Apparently it was 1000 dollars back in the day, so closer to 10,000. The guy I'm talking about is a bass player, so he had a lot of opportunities to play with a bunch of people. The mesa guy was actually this guy's drummer in his band. Anyways Howard dumble saw him with the amp and in about a month just went up to him and put down an amp case. It was the 3rd dumble ever made. The biggest kick was that it was free from the man itself. He sold it, but took a ton of photos of the board so he could get part values. This was before dumble started getting paranoid about his amp designs and started gooping.
Great vid mate, very interesting to watch you peel the onion.. always a pleasure :)
That fake heatsink made my day.:-)
Mesa quality engineering strikes again!
The Hee Haw reference.....Jr Sample
Pair up one of these with a Mark III combo and a stereo rack effects setup and you have glorious 80s tones for as long as they don't blow up on you.
Well, I don’t think I’ve ever heard any amp repairman say they enjoy working on a Mesa. Seems to be a trend. And the fact that Randall Smith is designing the “next generation” of Gibson amps doesn’t exactly fill me with optimism. I’m surprised that nobody has come out with a new Lab Series amp. B.B. sure made his sound great.
So did Ty Tabor.
Some years back I looked into making a Lab preamp for a client. Wasn't cost effective but I got far enough to work out the filters. The main hitch was the limiting circuit used an unobtanium chip with no sub available, so I would have had to make a discrete version of what else in that chip. Which would have been huge and then probably would have needed months of tweaking to get right.
Probably something for the modeling/impulse guys, not old analog fogies like me (I was in my late 30s then, but a fogie prodigy).
As an aside from a guy who does a lot of cooking and therefore much vegetable chopping, the "onion" usually rots in the center where you can't see it! Like a dried out filter cap or leaky/shorted coupling cap perhaps....which is why meters and measurements are necessary. Also wondering, Lyle, did you have to pull the PCB to swap the caps and grid leak resistors?
Excellent work! I wonder how high that shorted cap pulled the raw bias supply up for the other tube? The 250 was prolly a voltage divider between the plate resistor and the (now) 80k bias leak and bias network. Apparently the bias supply cap survived.
It was something I checked, but the raw bias stayed at -52V even when the bad components were in place.
With -52V on one side and 240V on the other that bias leak resistor had about 290V across it. I haven't looked it up but I would expect it to be rated for 250-300V, so that explains it's failure. I think it saved the bias supply.
I do want to change the bias filter caps, pending owner approval.
I always wanted a Mesa, until about 7 years ago and another channel was ranting about the difficulties with them and Mesa's terrible Customer service. I'll just stick with my Marshalls.
you managed to top solder those components?
pulling a mesa board is a pain
I think every tech in the world hates working on Mesa ...I hated working there lol....I ran over a section of that heat sink with a forklift...crushed it up real good.....got fired..
sounds pretty good for a Mesa…
Unfortunately is it not only Mesa where i see underrated coupling caps. It is really a no brainer and just a matter of cents and there wouldn't be as much excessive damage to the amp as it was. With the prices up in Aluminium i guess they will never again put a fake heatsink on.
wow, every video you make is like discovery channel haha. anyway, i have a redplating mesa boogie electradyne, can i have an accurate negative voltage reading in the two 220k bias resistors without disconnecting the resistors or the coupling caps? i suspect it has leaky caps as well as i measured the screen resistor and its fine. thanks!
Call BR-549...Noice with the unused heatsink. I wonder if Gibson buying them will clean up their designs?
One of the most overrated amps Ive ever worked on. Mesa Engineering, my ass…. Great video and I hope it’ll help others who can’t afford the high cost, and that’s if they’ll find a reasonable tech…..👍
The crazy thing about all this is that that stupid and unnecessary heat sink on the back of the amplifier probably costs as much or more than the difference in cost of upgrading the coupling caps from 400 to 630 Volt ratings.
Way more.
@@PsionicAudio , yeah, I figured; most electronic components tend to be relatively inexpensive, especially when you're buying in bulk, but mechanicals like chassis' and metal work and heat sinks and such tend to be quite expensive, especially if you're not buying something off the shelf or off the rack and you need it custom made to a certain dimension.
"...wheels within wheels in a spiral array...". Rush fan eh? I repaired amps for over twenty years and finally couldn't take the shitty design of most amps anymore. Nicely done.
To my understanding the satellite is not a "guitar amp", it is meant for line level signals. FWIW. It is to be used as a slave for a two amp setup, post efx-loop. Am I wrong?
It is more than that. Haven't drawn it out but it has an input gain stage, volume/tone ala tweed Princeton, another gain stage, then a crappy MV then a PI. The "loop" is ahead of the first gain stage, not the PI. So it wasn't really designed to be a good satellite power section.
Don't you just love secondary faults that nobody seemed to know about until it's on your bench?
Where you got that plastic pointer? I know I've seen them before and I can't for the life of me recall where or when or if it's actually some other tool that you repurposed
It came with a soldering iron I think. Weller 40W pencil kit. Bad iron, good chopstick.
I believe mesa [ randy ] used to brag about the hammer marks on the heat sink fins as proof of their QC
Sample? Junior?! These Amps have never received any bad press….I have a combo that sounds great but, I can’t rely on it!
A mkiii I worked on had that heat sink on it too. Lame. Had same imbalance of bias, as well. Bad PI coupling caps.
The only thing legendary about Mesa Boogie is their marketing. Yes, the Mark IIC+ was a hit, the Rectifier, ok, that was basically an SLO100 with some tweaks. But every Mesa amp I've ever played has felt stiff, cold, clinical, thin, brittle; they literally have me doubting that I want to continue playing guitar as they just feel terrible under the fingers. Anyway, not surprised Mesa Engineering and underrated components strike again, here. That heatsink looked a little pricey, wish they would have put that money into the actual components and design...oh well, typical Mesa.
Junior the movie with Arnold and Danny?
Good job.
Carbon composite is hygroscopic so it absorbs moisture from the air and it dries out with changes in humidity, so the value drifts around badly. As this process continues over time the resistance generally drifts high. Unless someone really really needs zero inductance resistors, there are zero reasons to use carbon comp resistors today.
Good stuff
Hee Haw! I'm probably even older than you.
A Mesa, uh oh!
As an old Tube amp tech,i simply do not understand the statement that the burnout of G2 Resistor on V1 made V2 take all the load ?.Its a fixed Bias amp.I think you have confused the placement of the powertubes placement,as the burned out one surely was the one taking the resistor out.
I don’t even know where to direct people for a quality high gain amp anymore. Even the Friedman amps are starting to look like a whole bunch of afterthoughts on the inside.
Depends on which Friedman model. Suhr and Metropolos are excellent but you pay for it, and George can only make so many Metro Plexes at once.
I'm consistently underwhelmed with Mesa. I owned a Mk. III and a 3-channel non-multiwatt Dual Rectifier. Both uninspiring. Not the "tone monster" as they are marketed.
I'm not saying anyone is wrong for owning or liking them, but I'm sure not going to bother with Mesa in the future.
I rarely see any mesas under $1,500.00 used.
I shake my head and smile, some fool gonna buy the name.and I will get the repair, or someone else will,,most over rated amps on the market
Great work on a questionable amp Lyle!
I got the Jr. Lol
I get the reference. ha-ha-ha Or should I say Hee-Haw.
typical Mesa. sounds like crap. i have fun watching the various problems in guitar amps. i was in the rf side of the business.. nice video.
Sample? I got it...I'm old too.
When they could have used the heatsink for heater regulators they used it for nothing . HE HAW got the reference. Look at the 65c cap rating . Bias resistor with about 1.2 watt load see why it failed. Look at the Der EE DE-5000 about 100 usd on ebay good to 2-3 % on the esr and tests at 100,120,1k,110k,100k well worth having at the price.
Junior- BR-549
Still think the best fix for any Mesa is a stick of dynamite or a can of gas and a match.
Totally agree, pure pieces of shit.
Jr. Samples from Cummings GA. Call BR-549. Hee Haw….!
How, um... INTERESTING that Mesa would bother to SPEND money on a custom-machined aluminum heatsink hooked up to nothing but the buyer's eyeballs -- probably what, $3 to $7 dollars for the part? -- while SKIMPING on grid resistors in the middle of the power flow of the core amp. Based on where you buy, there is no material price difference between the cheaper 1-watt carbon composites (anywhere from $0.36 each to $0.92 each) and better 5-watt metal oxides (set of 50 of them for $12.99 on Amazon or $0.27 each).
Don't forget the 50 cent difference between a 400V OD and a 600V.
Natural Science!! 😆
I'll take Things I Used to Be Able to Play for $500...
It's not like riding a bicycle sadly.
Ain't nothing natural about the design of that Mesa however.... It's physical features are illogical rather than geological. At Boogie, the only thing set in stone is the "stupid".
@@PsionicAudio Neither is playing Neil Peart's parts ... takes months of training. :/
I'm a pickin' 🐴
Saaaaaaaalute!
BR-549
🤣🤣 Dial BR-549! 🤣🤣
Sounds like a Mesa. Over hyped, underperformed.
Someone should build a Frankenstein amp entirely out of sample parts, lol. Has it been done already, let me know people 🤦♂
Call BR 549 Junior Samples Used Cars... 📞🤣👍
BR549
Messy Boogers! When they are right they still don't sound good.
LOL.... Guess I'm old.......
Hee-Haw!
BR549 lol
"Marketing BS" Sounds like BS to me...
You made a joke. Hee Haw!
I'm a pickin'...
@@PsionicAudio And I'm a grinnin'.
(For those who still don't get it, dial BR-549)
Gloom, despair and agony on me, You beat me to it...
BR-549
BR549