212Mavguy Posted March 12, 2017 Posted March 12, 2017 Last week, in my living room, with my parrots on my shoulder, while setting up to entertain them, I did step on the instrument cable plugged into my newest, bestest amp, a 50w RedPlate Aurora 34............ Dumble derived, Marshall-y voiced, uber-boutique (one of seven built) with seven VOS preamp tubes driving a pair or rare, platinum matched semi unobtanium VOS Tesla el34's from my personal, hoarded vintage tube collection...expressed through a nice roomy semi open back 2/12 stuffed with some also rare and oh so toneful JBL MI-12's... waaaaaaay too spendy for my ski instructor's meager four month income to begin with...... aaahhh, the vanity of it all..... The soft click sound was that of the input jack snapping cleanly in two. The female part I could still see was wobbly when I poked the male part in, not tight anymore. (Shudder) No little blue pill could fix THAT. As Charlie Brown said many times after missing the Lucy held football, AAAAAAAAUUUUUGH!!!!!!!!! $$$$$$$$$worth of amp, the frickin' queen RULER of my fifteen plus screaming strong electrical concubine harem...NO SOUND! NONE! Done.done.done. Well and truly BROOOOOOOKEN by yours truly. BROKEN!!!!!!!!! I opened it up to see the reality. There was wires, resistors, caps, eyelets, turrets....OH, MY...tsk tsk tsk tsk...more thangs than seemingly could be stuffed in Dolly's over her shoulders' boulder holders. That jack was in a tight spot. Down in a corner... And it had wires connected to it, and a resistor soldered inside the outer two of three solder tabs on one side, black, black, green, with a gold tolerance band. There was also a wire soldered across the three tabs on one side. a thin black wire going to somewhere on one side There was a gorgeously fitted heat shrink tubing covering the end of a shielded wire connected to one of the solder tabs on the other side, clearly the work of a builder with serious OCD build quality evident, which is always the case when viewing the guts of a RedPlate. Nothing comes close. Not even a Ceriatone, and those are some seriously well dressed builds as well. Imagine opening the hood of a Ferrari killer Le Mans Ford GT with the newly designed uber horsepower ecoboost engine to fix the fuel pump somewhere inside...and you're on a hotel dishwasher's budget... More panic. I left the chassis guts up on an amp cradle, covered the guts with a chunk of cardboard big enough to fit over the evidence. Every day for the next few days, I looked inside. The same thing greeted me. The same emotional reaction ensued... Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Call the Waaahmbulance! I thought whether I could just super glue the busted jack back together, then I thought...What would the designer, H squared do? What would Howard Dumble do? What would Andy Fuchs do? What would Bruce Egnater do? What would Chris Siegmund do? Truly I despaired, for the truth is that nothing would suffice except that the broken organ would need to be transplanted with an identical replacement. No boogering allowed for a RedPlate, that would be truly abominable, but if I sent it back to Cinnabar, Arizona would likely cost me a hundred bucks each way. Panic....panic...panic. Churning guts worse than after eating some of my underwear burning chili.... Then........ I remembered, I have some nice low wattage 20 and 35 watt soldering irons and a real soldering station mini tip iron in the basement, I can draw a picture of the jack's present wiring, as original and label the parts like a real tech would before disassembly. I do have plenty of desoldering braid... Soooooo...in a manic fit... I looked up and ordered three replacement jacks instead of one on fleabay in case I messed up on the first one, got the second one right, and have a spare for when something goes wrong at a future gig... From now on I'm going to loop the guitar cable around the amp handle for a strain relief before it gets plugged into the input jack so that mistake won't likely EVER happen again... The jacks are on order and will arrive in a few days. This, too, shall pass. I will win... Buuuuuut... it will take me an hour and a half to do what H squared, the genius engineer, or Keith, the guy who build the amp in the first place, to do in 10 minutes or less. Still beats a c-note to ship both ways...and the packing would take longer than my repairing would! The Parrots are back on top of their cage waiting...
yoslate Posted March 12, 2017 Posted March 12, 2017 I laughed! I cried! That was better than Cats! What a great narrative! So poignantly written I found myself delighted not to be in your shoes! I know exactly how you felt, as I've had so many experiences, different...but the same. But if anyone on this forum could have pulled off the fix.... Nicely played! It's my understanding that Redplates are something very special.
AP515 Posted March 12, 2017 Posted March 12, 2017 I can sympathize but not relate. I have never owned a Red Plate. I do hear they are wonderful. I have confidence that if you can write that well, you're soldering skills won't be far behind!
t0aj15 Posted March 12, 2017 Posted March 12, 2017 So much to do about nothing. Perhaps half as much time repairing as typing and all will be well again.
Gitfiddler Posted March 12, 2017 Posted March 12, 2017 Wow, that was quite a journey...a veritable Italian opera of amp angst...and some of the best forum writing ever. Can't wait for part II, the repair saga.
ElNumero Posted March 12, 2017 Posted March 12, 2017 I would have blamed the the whole incident on Parrots and then promptly shipped them to Jimmy Buffett in Key West!
LK155 Posted March 12, 2017 Posted March 12, 2017 Condolences on your misfortune. But your plan to loop the cable around the amp handle bothers me a bit. Should you happen to repeat this sad situation, wouldn't that tend to bring the amp crashing down to the floor? (I assume you have it sitting on a cab.) One possible safeguard would be to use a coil cord, letting the coil act as your strain relief. It you don't like the notion of a coil cord at the guitar end (I certainly wouldn't), use a straight cord there, and mate it up with a short coiled one at the amp end. You'd need a female-to-female TRS adapter, but that shouldn't be a big deal.
schundog Posted March 12, 2017 Posted March 12, 2017 That was a great, well written tale, and I, too, am on the edge of my seat to see how it ends! Good luck.
Spectrum13 Posted March 12, 2017 Posted March 12, 2017 Would make sense to have a breakaway component on both ends of a guitar cord. A shorter plug would pull off easier too. Fenders and Heritage have their jacks better positioned to prevent damage. Can't stress how dumb the top mounted jack on a 335 is compared to a 535 rim mount.
bolero Posted March 12, 2017 Posted March 12, 2017 So much to do about nothing. Perhaps half as much time repairing as typing and all will be well again. haha, yes I was thinking the same all this over a busted input jack?? very creatively written though. enjoyed it. should be easy enough to fix? good luck!
212Mavguy Posted March 17, 2017 Author Posted March 17, 2017 The replacement jack has arrived. It is a Cliff jack made in the UK with six solder tabs, three per side. Will get the iron out tonight and some desoldering braid to remove the solder from the old jack for some less destructive disassembly. Gonna have to find a way to keep the old jack from moving all over the place while doing that. Once the solder is gone from the joints will be easier to see how the thing was put together. Will use pencil and paper to draw original wiring layout. Idea is to use original wires without any cutting and shortening, not a lot of spare lengths, and working space is uncomfortably tight. Cross fingers!
212Mavguy Posted March 19, 2017 Author Posted March 19, 2017 The broken jack is finally removed... the drawing is made. I learned a lot while taking it apart. every wire and resistor lead had been tightly crimped before soldering, as if it was designed to work without solder applied. Ran out of time last night to start on the new jack. Even with the solder braid used to remove solder, the removal of wires and the one megohm resistor took a long time. One wire had to be clipped, the ground going to the chassis ground point. It has been stripped, all is ready for the reassembly. Was helpful to use a pair of lighted magnifying glasses, even with those this job is not fun at all. Working space is very, very tight.
bolero Posted March 20, 2017 Posted March 20, 2017 yeah it's a pain to remove old wire that's been wrapped/tied and soldered it is the most reliable way of making a connection though vs vibration etc
212Mavguy Posted April 1, 2017 Author Posted April 1, 2017 The new jack is in! It took quite a while to wire up before installing, I was very, very careful to crimp the new jack mounted ground wire and original resistor's leads around the solder tabs as carefully as Keith from RedPlate had done, the old wires went into the more roomy than original equipment solder tabs, the soldering went great...the iron was given time to get very hot...Then it came time to finagle the damn thing back into place...as it turned out the new jack's solder tabs were about an eighth of an inch longer than the original, and that meant quite a wrestling match to get the jack in, it was crowded on all sides by the chassis bottom and side, the three way bright switch, and the volume pot. It went in, but only cleared the body of the volume pot by around a sixteenth of an inch, both rows of solder tabs were straddling it. There was only one way it was going to fit and not short out against something, and just a few degrees of rotation was available in either direction. Plus, it was a tight fit getting it through the original hole drilled in the chassis. Had to get the outer nut threaded in properly without cross threading to pull it through the hole, then remove the nut, put on the spacer and re tighten. I held my breath, plugged in the speaker cable, plugged in the instrument cable, and turned it on...about twenty seconds later I could hear the faintest of noise coming out of the speaker cab, there was no loud hum or smoke, crackle, pop...waited another ten seconds, strummed the 555's strings and the damn thing ROARED! Took a couple minutes to verify that I had the reverb hooked up right the first time, it was. The Parrots screamed and danced their approval... one of them got a bit excited and left a big wet steamer on the back of my t-shirt, but I don't mind that, I always have the attitude that every one else does anyway... What, me, worry? hehehe... I missed the sound of that amp, what a relief to get it back!
golferwave Posted April 1, 2017 Posted April 1, 2017 Congrats! Now turn it up and enjoy your efforts!
golferwave Posted April 1, 2017 Posted April 1, 2017 PS - Whenever I get into a wrestling match with a part I find that a big screwdriver and large hammer do the trick. Just a handy household tip for your next project. LOL
bolero Posted April 1, 2017 Posted April 1, 2017 well allright...congrats!! I guess we can use the term "Parrot shit approved" from now on, when rating amps
212Mavguy Posted April 1, 2017 Author Posted April 1, 2017 Yep, playing through a RedPlate pretty much scores a 10 on the PSA scale, out of ten times playing through one all ten I keep playing for a long while and they just can't hold it anymore...Both RP amps cause that when you put a Heritage instrument through them. Gotta go, going to make some Parrots work on the jam set list.
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