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Amp Story - No Sound ..... for a while


tulk1

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My turn to tell an amp story about reduced volume. I gig a Mesa TA15. Has 25w/15w/5w Multi-blah blah. I use it for everything - guitar, mandolin, fiddle and banjo. That's all there is, right? :) Last Saturday at the Spotted Pig (yep, spotted pig!!) we break between sets 2 and 3. The amp has sounded a bit too loud for sets 1 & 2 so I turn the vol down a bit, look at the stuff and start to get ready. It's a banjo song, so on comes the banjo and ..... uh, where's my volume? I mean its SO quite I can't even hear the darned thing. Now, the crowd has been into us all night, they're very loud, very rowdy. I'm up on "stage" trying to troubleshoot the vol thing, with the crowd noise so loud I can't concentrate. Then add Tracy standing over me going "whats wrong?" "is it ....., or is it ...., did you try ....." ARGH!!! I just want to throw the d*mned banjo on the floor and say suck it!! I eventually pull the cable from the pedal board and go straight to the amp with it turned up to a bazillion and there is enough vol to do the song, and couple of ditties.

 

After that I go back to guitar, thinking I'm going to try my pedalboard again. I unplug the cable from the amp (it goes into the board) and I notice one of the toggles is out of place. Uh, it's supposed to be level (15w) or in the up pos (25w). But it's in the lower pos at 5w!!! Whoops!! How/When did I do that? I discreetly flip the switch back to 15w, turn the vol down on the amp and go, "oh my, look, it's working again!" And we just went right on playing.

 

Yesterday Tracy calls to see if I've figured out what was wrong with the pedalboard. I just tell her I couldn't find anything, but it seems to be working. Guess it was just one of those things. .............. :icon_tongue:

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Ha....... don't you love those moments... NOT!!! When I used to gig regularly in an acousitc duet, I had the same problem, except total volume loss. I ended up having to use a vocal mic on the acoustic guitar for the whole 2nd & 3rd set. The problem wasn't with the PA, or piezo pickup, or DI box, but........ a completely failed input cord!!!! New input cord, problem gone.

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I feel your pain. A couple of weeks ao, I spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out why I was getting nothing out of one of my amps, checking one thing and the next. Finally solved the problem when I finally noticed that the output cable from my pedal chain was plugged into a different amp. :facepalm:

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Well, I don't feel so bad, now!

 

Ha....... don't you love those moments... NOT!!! When I used to gig regularly in an acousitc duet, I had the same problem, except total volume loss. I ended up having to use a vocal mic on the acoustic guitar for the whole 2nd & 3rd set. The problem wasn't with the PA, or piezo pickup, or DI box, but........ a completely failed input cord!!!! New input cord, problem gone.

 

I feel your pain. A couple of weeks ao, I spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out why I was getting nothing out of one of my amps, checking one thing and the next. Finally solved the problem when I finally noticed that the output cable from my pedal chain was plugged into a different amp. :facepalm:

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