# Fizz and bad distortion and noise and loss of power



## bcmatt (Aug 25, 2007)

Ok, what sort of problems are actually fixed by giving the amp a wack?

I built a 5e3 head; some of you remember the one that I did as a Herzog type project with a dummy load when their is no speaker cab plugged in and a line out with volume on the back.

Anyways, it seemed to work great as an amp (although I didn't use it a whole lot before I built a head can for it), but as soon as I built a head cab I've been having some problems.

It'll start making noise and losing power and distort. Sometimes it is subtle, especially if playing it hard already. Anyways, I give it a hit on the side of the can and it usually fixes it.
I've been assuming it was lead dress issues because thing are sort of tight and when I was screwing down the eyelet board compared to when it was up away from the chassis (which was necessary in order to get the input jacks mounted) it would cause problems.

But ya, I can't see anything wrong, of course it is impossible to see under the board now.

But, does wire placement even cause this? Should I really be looking for a cold solder joint or bad grounding somewhere. The fact that a wack on the cab seems to always fix it is making me think that it is not just making a wire fall into perfect lead dress situations somewhere...

Anything else this could be?

Voltages seemed right, and swapping out to all different tubes changed nothing either.


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## bcmatt (Aug 25, 2007)

Well, I finally figured it out. That black ground wire on the bottom right corner of the eyelet board was not soldered on either end!! How could I have missed that. It was only touching! I'm such an idiot! Took me enough months! Well, I think this unit will see a lot more use now!


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## WCGill (Mar 27, 2009)

Good that you found it. Whacking will never solve lead dress problems but usually will address, albeit temporarily, cold solder joints, bad connections and dirty tube sockets. Keep up the good work.


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## Guest (May 5, 2012)

atta boy!
like your cabinet work.


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## bcmatt (Aug 25, 2007)

Ya, so it seems so obvious now what I should have been looking for. It's funny how I made the wrong hopeless assumption for months, and finally it dawns on me this afternoon to look again for a bad solder connection.
YOu can see the culprit here on the grounding lug (a wire poking through the top hole of the lug but not soldered at all):


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## bcmatt (Aug 25, 2007)

I gotta say, I've been using this amp a lot lately, and it sounds darn good. Tweed Deluxes are just such great amps. Do the clean to mean thing so well and great creamy breakup. Nice mids too. Simple perfection in an amp. I think it helps that I have a very oversized OT, so the bass just won't flub out at all.
I've been actually using this lately at the wet side of my rig with reverb and delays and more of the clean tone (well set to break up later than the Liverpool). Just ran the VVR all the way up/off, and then used my Trainwreck Liverpool straight up at about half voltage for dry and dirty. But ya, the 5E3 is such a great little amp that gets pretty loud and takes pedals so well without noise too. Oh ya, my point was that riding the guitar volume worked quite well with this amp. The gain structure seemed close enough to the Liverpool that I wasn't having the two amps' volumes getting away from each other when riding the guitar volume. They balanced well. So, ya, I've been please I finially "finished" this amp. Everyone should have a 5e3 in their arsenal!


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