# Wild Bill or Scott help please



## davetcan (Feb 27, 2006)

Or anyone for that matter. 

I sold a Carvin Legacy (VL100) to a really nice young guy over a year ago. It was a couple of years old at the time and working fine. Worked really well for him up until a couple of months ago when he blew one (or two, I can't remember) of the transformers. Carvin really gave him the run around (and still are) but I think they eventually sent the parts and he had a local tech fix it. He has it back now and is still having problems. Specifically on the clean channel, which starts to break up and gets worse the hotter the amp gets. Any thoughts? 
I'm hoping he'll join up and post here as he can give a lot more details. 
Bill, would you be willing to take a look at it if it's not something pretty straightforward? I was hoping it would be something as simple as a bad tube but he says he's swapped them and still has the issue.

thanks guys :food-smiley-004: 

btw he's in a great band along with our other guitar players son, who plays bass. (hence the connection).


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## davetcan (Feb 27, 2006)

Oops posted in the wrong section, duh!

Sorry about that.


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## Wild Bill (May 3, 2006)

*Sure!*



davetcan said:


> Or anyone for that matter.
> 
> I sold a Carvin Legacy (VL100) to a really nice young guy over a year ago. It was a couple of years old at the time and working fine. Worked really well for him up until a couple of months ago when he blew one (or two, I can't remember) of the transformers. Carvin really gave him the run around (and still are) but I think they eventually sent the parts and he had a local tech fix it. He has it back now and is still having problems. Specifically on the clean channel, which starts to break up and gets worse the hotter the amp gets. Any thoughts?
> be glad to look at it for youI'm hoping he'll join up and post here as he can give a lot more details.
> ...


I've not worked on any Carvin's yet but I've heard about a couple of them that blew the power transformers. Maybe they're a little light on their ratings, I dunno.

I just looked at the schematic and one thing struck me - have you checked at the back to see if the bias switch is in the right position?

This amp appears to have adjustable bias but also a switch to toggle between a bias voltage for either EL34s or 5881/6L6s, depending on what the user ordered or installed. 

So the amp can run either kind of output tubes but ABSOLUTELY the bias must be set correctly. Otherwise you get precisely the kind of troubles you've mentioned. You really have to look at the instructions on the schematic to get it biased right.

Let me know if you've checked for that.

I'd be glad to look at it for you. I did find one link that talks about Carvin which you might think about:

http://www.harpamps.com/micKamps/Why-Carvin-Sucks.html

The comments come from Lord Valve, who is a longstanding tube and amp guru. I respect his opinions.

It may be that Carvin is a bit optimistic about its tranny ratings. I had a Boogie Nomad amp in that had blown its power transformer, twice! It was just a bit small for the demand being put upon it. I replaced it with a much beefier Hammond unit for the main power and a small extra Hammond to look after the solid state bit of circuitry. It will never blow its power trannie again! We should never assume that the designer was perfect, especially with some of the newer boutique guys. With small volume production it can take a while for problems to become obvious.


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