Fixing a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe guitar amp.

[DrNomis_44]

Hi Everyone,

I'm just currently in the process of fixing a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe guitar amp for a friend of mine, the complaint was that it seemed to stop working at random times, although the Valve heaters would light up, I did some googling on the internet and managed to find some useful info on what the cause of the problem could be, I had a look inside and managed to find one cap, a 47uF/500V DC Electrolytic, which appeared to have leaked some of it's electrolyte, so, I needed to de-solder and replace it, Jaycar Electronics only stock a 47uF/450V DC cap in their parts inventory, but, they also stocked a 100uF/400V DC cap too, so, I bought two of them, two 220k/ 5% 1Watt resistors, and two 470 Ohm / 5 Watt Ceramic resistors, which I will use as replacements for two 470 Ohm 5 Watt resistors that are soldered to the PCB, they are part of the power supply that supply power to the channel switching, here's what the faulty cap looks like:




I tried to get a clear pic of it, but this is the best I could manage, anyway, notice that light green colour where the lead goes into the cap?, that's the electrolyte that leaked out of the cap.


A word of warning, do not try to fix a Valve guitar amp yourself, unless you are absolutely sure you know what you are doing, and know how to safely work on them, you can seriously injure yourself, or worse, end up dead if you make a mistake.

[DrNomis_44]

Update:


I finished working on the amp, got it back together, and gave it a test-run, it seems to be working fine as far as I can tell, no bangs, or smoke, it powered up properly, all I have to do now is give it back to it's owner and see if it truly is fixed.

[dave.king1]

Good to hear there is no smoke Doc, being a US Fender it would be imperial smoke which is much more expensive than metric smoke

[DrNomis_44]

Good to hear there is no smoke Doc, being a US Fender it would be imperial smoke which is much more expensive than metric smoke

Hahahaha....good one mate, actually, although it is US made, it was designed to run on our Australian 240V AC power system, so it's had the imperial to metric conversion done to it at the factory when it was made, therefore, the smoke would have been metric-smoke had it appeared, inside every electronic component is smoke, waiting to come out of it under the right conditions and circumstances.....haha.

I'm hoping that the amp stays fixed though, cause there's nothing worse than something that you think you have fixed, going faulty again.