Fender blackface Vibrolux

[laurie]

Well, I got the amp back together and things are not yet right.

There is a really unpleasant background crackling noise at moderate volume. Sounds like one of the old resistors breaking down under load. Plus the vibrato doesn't work.

I've run out of time for now so it will go into the cupboard until a bunch of real-life stuff (as apposed to music-mucking-around stuff) is dealt with.

More to come in the coming weeks/months.

[Zerksies]

So, not as unmolested as I was told.

It has been recapped. Very nice capacitors, date code is 2015. This is a happy thing!

Not a lot of restoration to do...
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20250319_152123.jpg

I put 20uf in the first two spots it brough tsome nice bottom end

[bigtone23]

What a nice find!
The VR is a cool amp, more headroom than the Deluxe Reverb, but not quite as big as the Twin.

[laurie]

Overheated and broken power tube socket.
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20250408_144545.jpg (241.78 KiB) Viewed 3856 times

[Pepe]

Ah, so this was the culprit? No faulty capacitor or resistor, then?

[laurie]

Don't know yet... need to fix this first

[laurie]

Screen resistors are also way out of spec. Should be 470 Ohms and one is 740 the other 550.

[Pepe]

Sad to hear that. When you showed us all the replaced high quality resistors I had assumed that these had been replaced with matching ones.

[laurie]

Ah... the new high quality capacitors are good! The screen resistors of which I speak are the old ones on the back of the tube socket.
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Vibrolux screen resistor.jpg (219.43 KiB) Viewed 3732 times

[Pepe]

Sorry, I meant the capacitors. The one resistor on the right looks like it got hot, or is that dirt?