Express 5:25 noise / solution

I've had an Express 5:25 for about 13 months and has seveal noise issues that I thought were tube related. I had noise only on the #1 green / lower gain channel and more so on the clean setting. Replaced V1 and V2 a couple of times. Then last month, I started to have severe noise when I turned any pot on the green channel. Took it in for service and they replaced a coupling capacitor in the tone stack of the #1 channel. Not only solved the scratchy pot problem, but very little noise on this channel now...........The tech thinks the cap slowly degraded to the point of severe DC leakage and when it "totally failed" that's when the pot noise problem occured....

Just thought I'd pass this along....I know 99% of noise is likely to be tube related , but I was lucky that a "total" cap failure occured.............

All fixed!!!

55Tele said:

I've had an Express 5:25 for about 13 months and has seveal noise issues that I thought were tube related. I had noise only on the #1 green / lower gain channel and more so on the clean setting. Replaced V1 and V2 a couple of times. Then last month, I started to have severe noise when I turned any pot on the green channel. Took it in for service and they replaced a coupling capacitor in the tone stack of the #1 channel. Not only solved the scratchy pot problem, but very little noise on this channel now...........The tech thinks the cap slowly degraded to the point of severe DC leakage and when it "totally failed" that's when the pot noise problem occured....

Just thought I'd pass this along....I know 99% of noise is likely to be tube related , but I was lucky that a "total" cap failure occured.............

All fixed!!!

Click to expand...

glad you fixed it.
You know if you buy either an ISP Decimator or an MXR Smart Gate you'll have an almost silent amp instantly - even when the gain on the burn channel is maxed out :mrgreen:

These Express amps are fairly new, I'm surprised you would get one with a bad cap.

ALl of my noise issues are self induced / player error. The NS2 noise suppressor is the best thing I've done. But I also found that some noise can be attributed to what order my pedals are in.

The rest of my noise problems were 99% eliminated when I bought kits and modded all of my pedals, or sent them to the modder for the work. Unbelievable difference. I had no idea off the shelf pedals would be so average sounding. Profit motive at the expense of best possible tone. But I'm grateful we have people out there with mod kits. Huge difference.

I have found in my experience the Express series to be a 'noisy' amp. AAMOF it took going back to GC 3 times to find the one I have. I have read a lot about replacing preamp tubes and such to quiet them down. I am currently experimenting with some 12AT7's in V1 and V2 that has cut even more of the noise out as well as greatly reduced the gain.

Mind you now the noise does not get in the way of the tone and I probably would have been okay with the first one I brought home if it were just for rehearsal and club gigging, but the majority of my playing is in a church praise band so the quieter the better.

Well the 5:25 is naturally noisier than the 5:50.
With my 5:50 I got it silent by swapping the stock Mesa tubes for those recommended by Doug at www.dougstubes.com. That reduced it by about 50%. Then using a MXR Smart Gate got rid of the rest. The ISP Decimator is also great and both are much better than the boss NS-1 which will suck tone and sustain from your amp.

As the tone of pedals is just as important when they're turned both on and off I made sure I bought silent pedals. All the good ones are silent. Result is a silent rig - pretty easy to do.

Here's what I've discovered about the noise thing so far:

I'm sure there are some better tubes that will cut the hiss some but I don't think it's primarily a tube thing. Seems to be a gain staging thing with the way the different channels are set up. You can't just crank up and go with this amp. And it's different in the 5 watt setting and the 25 watt. Takes a lot of exploring. The gain/eq/master relationships are very important and extremely sensitive to small changes.

The most offensive problem on mine was on the #1 Clean. If you crank up the eq knobs here, especially the treble, keep the gain below about 11, and then crank up the Master to get it loud.....HISSSSSSS. But... if you keep the Master way down, keep Mid and Bass way down, set the volume with the Gain and Treble, and then barely ease up the Master, you can get a good loud clean with little hiss. Clean will take a lot of Gain without distorting if you keep the eq settings low.

#1 Crunch.....if I do this one right I can get to 12 or so on the Master with almost total silence. I love this channel. I spend most of my time on Channel 1.

#2 Blues/Burn. You expect some hiss/noise for cranked gain type stuff and #2 isn't that bad unless you start cranking the Master. My buddy's Marshal DSL 50 is noisier at around the same gain/volume levels. He comments on how quiet mine is.

I never use the Master over about 9 10 oclock. Anything above that, except for on the #1 Crunch, just turns into hiss/mud. One of the keys for me and mine: Set volume levels with gain and eq, with those as low as possible for the sound you want, and then fine tune sparingly with the Master.

Seems to me like the gain on this amp is just kinda set to HIGH at all times. Wants to just scream with little juice, especially when just using the internal 10". Thus, the hiss when cranked. It doesn't NEED to be cranked....it's cranking at idle almost. Using the 4ohm jacks and going to outside cabs seems to give it a lower noise floor and allow for more cranking/headroom.

I'm coming up on a retube shortly. Will be interesting to see if new tubes affect the hiss level as some have said. The Webers I put in mine really get this amp singing too. I think speakers make more difference than tubes.

Just a few observations. It's always interesting to me to read how others have approached the hiss problem with the Express. I think some gave up too easily and just got rid of it. I'm glad I stuck with mine. Great little amp. Records very nicely too.

Steven L...thats' a great repsonse to the noise issue and I'm going to try your suggestions....I also notice that the gain controls seem to affect the overall volume more than the master.....I'm going to try reducing the mid and bass eq as well...........

Last night was my first extended practice with my 5:25 since getting it back from service............it is cetainly better than new now....prior to it being fixed, seems I always had popping and crackling issues that I thought were V1 or V2 related.....now that is fixed....

I love the clean sound of the 5:25 amp and the versitility........any boogie I ever played through (except my Mark I's) have had a high noise floor..............

I haven't had any crackling or popping. Just ssshhhhhhhhhhh.

Seems the eq on the Express is very powerful, dumps in a lot of gain, especially the Treble. Tiny bits too much can hiss you out. A tiny tweak either way can sometimes make the difference you're looking for.

For some tones, more toward the cleans, I take the mids and bass all the way down, set the tone/volume with gain/treble, just barely ease up the mids/bass to get some balls, then Master up to 8 or 9.

Most crummy amps I've used, you just crank everything up and play, then wish you could crank something more to get some good tone. Not so with the Express. The old adage applies...."less is more."

Seriously guys - if you swap out the stock Mesa tubes for quiet ones, plus stick a good Noise Supressor in your loop you'll never even think about amp hiss again cause it'll be silent no matter how you tweak it - problem solved :mrgreen:

I've heard widely varying degrees of effectiveness in swapping out tubes..... from no effect to dead silent. Mines ok for now but I'll be ready for new tubes before too long and it will be interesting to see what happens. I've already put GT power tubes in it with no discernible effect on noise.

I don't really want a noise suppressor in my chain anywhere. The only instance I could see a need for one would be if I were cranking all the knobs way up and that's not really necessary. I have an old Behringer Denoiser (works pretty good actually) in a rack...may try that just to see what it does. I also have a Behringer Virtualizer reverb/effects unit that sounds pretty good in the loop. Thinking about getting a small rack box to put between the amp and the cab. Maybe get a good regulated power strip in the rack too.

Will try anything once.

Surely Mesa doesn't just put crap tubes in their amps? That would seem to me to be a very BAD business practice.

StevenL said:

Surely Mesa doesn't just put crap tubes in their amps? That would seem to me to be a very BAD business practice.

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Well if you look at the Tubes section in this forum you'll see this is a contentious issue.
I and many Mesa owners agree that the Chinese Tubes Mesa use in their new amps are not top quality.
They are not crap either, just not the best. Mesa Corp BS on about their Chinese tubes being fully tested etc for quality control, but all good tube sellers do that so it's just marketing crap.
Many Mesa owners have experimented with different tubes and got much better results with them.
8 months ago I got specific advice from Doug at http://www.dougstubes.com on which tubes would he recommend for my 5:50 to cut amp hiss, increase gain but still keep the same cleans.

I bought what he recommended (cost $100 total) and they made a big improvement.
Cut amp hisss by about 50%, provided significantly more gain, improved amp tone, made it smoother & kept the same chimy cleans. I'll never go back to Mesa tubes now.

As for noise gate's this little baby will solve all your problems

http://guitars.musiciansfriend.com/product/MXR-M135-Smart-Gate-Pedal?sku=151112

So will an ISP Decimator