Another TA-30 loop problem

okey I thought it was me the 1st few days with a new TA-30 amp. Lots of knobs and switches. Lots of great sound..Ohh was this a new Mesa sound that doesnt make any sound? huh?...hmmmmm....

Well seems that my TA-30 and yours too will have the same problem no doubt in my mind. If I can create a problem twice then its not my problem anymore, its built into the amp.

I have the amp on 15w with the master volume at 1/3rd and the cut/master pulled out and about 1/3rd volume.Little dirty crunchy bottom/clean top sound. In the FX loops is a memory man looper with 30 sec. record time. Now after a few loops of recording over several minutes the sound started to decay in quality. As it should with 4 takes or more its going to suffer some. Understandable. Now the amp starts to sound thin dull and then emits no sound. Looking at the back of the amp the V9 tube, which is the 2nd power tube used in the 15w mode is cherry Red all the way to the top. No red ring no blue ring but cherry freeking red. Soon the amp shuts down ,in some kind of protective internal thermal overloading.

whats happening? heres my idea and you can slap me. The FX loop, the Preamp, and the Reverb are all TUBE driven. The FX loop has no volume but is set as you recorded the patch so the amplitude is constant across the loop. When you choke the post side down limiting the output, you back up the electrons on the pre side..ala the tube getting cherry red before shutting down is the excess electron flow heating up from the cut/master switch throttling the amps volume.

You guys arent going nuts the TA has some built in issues that make it unfreindly. The FX loop/Reverb switch is said not to upset the tone. Didnt mention any word of increasing the output of White noise across it by 10 fold. I took back my 2nd TA today.. I dont know what to do? You got patches to fix this? I dont thinks so...

Shark said:

okey I thought it was me the 1st few days with a new TA-30 amp. Lots of knobs and switches. Lots of great sound..Ohh was this a new Mesa sound that doesnt make any sound? huh?...hmmmmm....

Well seems that my TA-30 and yours too will have the same problem no doubt in my mind. If I can create a problem twice then its not my problem anymore, its built into the amp.

I have the amp on 15w with the master volume at 1/3rd and the cut/master pulled out and about 1/3rd volume.Little dirty crunchy bottom/clean top sound. In the FX loops is a memory man looper with 30 sec. record time. Now after a few loops of recording over several minutes the sound started to decay in quality. As it should with 4 takes or more its going to suffer some. Understandable. Now the amp starts to sound thin dull and then emits no sound. Looking at the back of the amp the V9 tube, which is the 2nd power tube used in the 15w mode is cherry Red all the way to the top. No red ring no blue ring but cherry freeking red. Soon the amp shuts down ,in some kind of protective internal thermal overloading.

whats happening? heres my idea and you can slap me. The FX loop, the Preamp, and the Reverb are all TUBE driven. The FX loop has no volume but is set as you recorded the patch so the amplitude is constant across the loop. When you choke the post side down limiting the output, you back up the electrons on the pre side..ala the tube getting cherry red before shutting down is the excess electron flow heating up from the cut/master switch throttling the amps volume.

You guys arent going nuts the TA has some built in issues that make it unfreindly. The FX loop/Reverb switch is said not to upset the tone. Didnt mention any word of increasing the output of White noise across it by 10 fold. I took back my 2nd TA today.. I dont know what to do? You got patches to fix this? I dont thinks so...

Click to expand...

You should call Mesa and see if they can help. Sounds like you just have a bad tube honestly. There are people out there gigging the TA 30s who use it to its full extent, and I've never read about similar issues as the ones you presented here.

Good luck! :wink:

The odds of getting 2 brand new amps to fail in the same manner thats previously been unexplored are very very slim. And you says its tubes? Reality check....The lone star has much the same circuitry but the send on the Fx loop has a volume level adjustment. Im thinkin that the Fx loop/reverb and pre amp tube all punching the little EL 84 is torching it in the 15w mode. Too much juice in and not enough out is fryin the tube. Again, the 2 amps did this very same thing. The V9 tube turned cherry red all the 3/4 way to the top on both amps. This is no more than a noticeable small red ring on the rest of the power tubes. Too much heat being introduced into the tube and its overloading IMO. You can switch to 30 or 40 watts but you have taken the meat out of it till the tube cools down. Thats why it started working again the times I stopped what I was doing trying to see what was wrong. Go read the manual smoke a cig and come back , flip some switches and it started working again. The Guy at the store told me the amp was doing this because I left it on for 5 hours. Told him I was done with it then if it wouldn't work for more than 5 hours before it crapped out. How many people do you know who GIG with a memory man jammin thru the Fx loop in 15 w mode on a Mesa TA-30? Was one. Now there is none .
I will try out a Lonestar 2 x 12 now see what it does. Yeah Im going to do the same thing and see if it shuts down. All the crap I went thru for 3 days this weekend is unacceptable and unexpected from such a Fine line of amps. Im not going to give up on Mesa just the TA series after 2 successive failures.

Thanks for your reply you make me think more about this. I wish I knew more about electronic circuitry so I can pinpoint it without any doubt bec it has aggravated me and I know Im not stoopid. The worst now is my money is locked up in limbo credit refund land and I cant go get anything else until I get my money back dammit Jim!!

Shark please allow me to gain a better understanding of your problem by answering a few questions that I have regarding your original post. I own a TA30 112 combo and would like a better understanding of what you are experiencing.

1. TA30 combo or head/cab?
2. If head/cab which cab and what speaker load (4, 8, 16ohm)?
3. It sounds like you are experiencing the problem in Ch1 Top Boost mode, 15W, Ch1 volume about 1/3, cut knob pulled to act as Ch1 Master Volume about 1/3, reverb/effects toggle engaged, MM looper engaged with a record time of 30 seconds. Is this correct?
4. Have you experienced the same problem with any other mode/channel all things else being the same?
5. Ever experienced similar issues when playing in 30 or 40W mode using MM looper?

My guess is that the MM looper has programmable options including its output level..correct? If so, the MM output level might be set too high and is overdriving the TA30 effects circuit which is causing power tube to glow red? However, if this were the case, I wouldn't think the sound from your TA would be very pleasing even prior to the power tube glowing red. I really have no idea......just guessing?

I have played in all power settings (15, 30 & 40) of all 5 modes of my TA30 with Nova System engaged for long durations without any issues, but have never played my amp with a looper engaged in the loop....so my comparison isn't apples to apples.

I understand your frustration. My suggestion is to contact MB.

Best of luck!

I bought a TA-30 head about 3 or 4 months ago and have been using it in a band setting since it was new. I didn't notice the EFX Loop issue right off until it was pointed out to me by my band mate that bought the TA-30 head about a week ago. I noticed it a bit more when I brought the head home and played it in a quiet room. Something happened tonight though at rehearsal, we finished a song (I was on Channel 2 15W Hi 2 Mode) and we started to smell an electrical burning. We noticed it was coming from my amp and when I looked inside the middleish tube (as you are facing the head) was glowing bright cherry red. We immediately shut it down and left it off for a few minutes. I turned it back on and continued on with rehearsal carefully. It is seemed fine the rest of the night and I didn't notice the smell anymore. This fix you speak of must be very new, because this is the first I've heard of it. I won't be happy if I have to send the head back to California for repair but I'd do it if it corrects the issue. I hope my amp isn't damaged now. I love the sound of this amp!

1) I am not using the effects loop.

2) I was using Channel 2 Hi-2 in 15W.

3) I was playing a moderate volume, our drummer does not play acoustic drums.

GuitarGuru67 said:

I bought a TA-30 head about 3 or 4 months ago and have been using it in a band setting since it was new. I didn't notice the EFX Loop issue right off until it was pointed out to me by my band mate that bought the TA-30 head about a week ago. I noticed it a bit more when I brought the head home and played it in a quiet room. Something happened tonight though at rehearsal, we finished a song (I was on Channel 2 15W Hi 2 Mode) and we started to smell an electrical burning. We noticed it was coming from my amp and when I looked inside the middleish tube (as you are facing the head) was glowing bright cherry red. We immediately shut it down and left it off for a few minutes. I turned it back on and continued on with rehearsal carefully. It is seemed fine the rest of the night and I didn't notice the smell anymore. This fix you speak of must be very new, because this is the first I've heard of it. I won't be happy if I have to send the head back to California for repair but I'd do it if it corrects the issue. I hope my amp isn't damaged now. I love the sound of this amp!

1) I am not using the effects loop.

2) I was using Channel 2 Hi-2 in 15W.

3) I was playing a moderate volume, our drummer does not play acoustic drums.

Click to expand...

Your problem is different than what Shark purported. If you aren't using the loop, then the loop is not engaged. Shark was talking about a problem with the tube driven effects loop when it was engaged, and the possible imbalance that may be occurring by the TA30s lack having a dedicated volume control for the effects loop.

Did you do a tube swap?

GuitarGuru67 said:

I bought a TA-30 head about 3 or 4 months ago and have been using it in a band setting since it was new. I didn't notice the EFX Loop issue right off until it was pointed out to me by my band mate that bought the TA-30 head about a week ago. I noticed it a bit more when I brought the head home and played it in a quiet room. Something happened tonight though at rehearsal, we finished a song (I was on Channel 2 15W Hi 2 Mode) and we started to smell an electrical burning. We noticed it was coming from my amp and when I looked inside the middleish tube (as you are facing the head) was glowing bright cherry red. We immediately shut it down and left it off for a few minutes. I turned it back on and continued on with rehearsal carefully. It is seemed fine the rest of the night and I didn't notice the smell anymore. This fix you speak of must be very new, because this is the first I've heard of it. I won't be happy if I have to send the head back to California for repair but I'd do it if it corrects the issue. I hope my amp isn't damaged now. I love the sound of this amp!

1) I am not using the effects loop.

2) I was using Channel 2 Hi-2 in 15W.

3) I was playing a moderate volume, our drummer does not play acoustic drums.

Click to expand...

Your problem is different than what Shark purported. If you aren't using the loop, then the loop is not engaged. Shark was talking about a problem with the tube driven effects loop when it was engaged, and the possible imbalance that may be occurring by the TA30s lack having a dedicated volume control for the effects loop.

Did you do a tube swap?

I've been having similar problems with my TA-30 combo as well. It all started with a burning smell I was getting and it was bothering me. I called mesa, and they said it sounded like a power tube was failing, so they sent me a new set of power tubes. Sure enough, I took out V8 and at the upper half of the tube there was a small charred spot which confirmed the failing tube. This was problem #1.

Problem two came about after I changed the power tubes. As i was close to the speaker on the floor, I noticed the extra noise i was getting on channel 1 with the effects loop engaged. It's not much, but enough to bug me. When switched to bypass...it was silent. I called Mesa and they said they could do an upgrade that would replace an unshielded wire next to a transformer that was picking up Electromagnetic interference on the loop/reverb circuit. Why in the world would you put any type of unshielded wiring in an amplifier that produces sound (or any electrical equipment for that matter)? Especially one that's 1800 bucks.

So, they wanted me to remove the chassis and ship it in order to do the upgrade/check the amp, etc. I didnt wanna do that. I took it back to martin music in memphis and they took care of it for me and shipped it both ways free of charge. Those guys at martin are great by the way. Mesa took care of the shipping after they talked to martin music. They did the wiring upgrade and checked everything out. They said everything was fine.

Now, I just got the amp back and when i get home i notice when i switch to 40 watts on both channels, this awful noise starts happening after about a minute or so. It's like a slow popping/buzzing that accelerates and gets really fast. I called mesa and left a message. At this point i'm very frustrated. They call me back and leave a message saying they would never send anything out like this and that it is probably a minor problem caused by shipping and handling. So, I swapped out the preamp tubes and it wasn't any of them. I also made sure the power tubes were snug, and after i did this and turned it back on the popping stopped. BUT, after I turned it on for a few minutes the power tube in slot V8 started glowing cherry red from top to bottom. This is similar to what was happening when i first got the amp and noticed the burning smell. I addressed this problem with mesa before and he said the EL84's are going to run hot. But should they run this hot, should they glow cherry red? It's like it's cooking my tubes. They said they went through it thoroughly at the factory and couldn't find anything wrong with it. I was wondering if you guys are having similar problems and what you think about the matter.

So far these are my problems... The failing tube after I bought it (fixed)....the reverb/bypass noise (fixed).....the popping sound on 40w (gone for now).....and the glowing power tube(s) (not fixed).

Why is it that the people who are severely bashing the TA-30, on this forum, happen to only have around two total posts each? It's like these people don't have the time to come to forums to begin with and share their joys of their new purchases. Yet, they take the time to create a few derogatory posts.

Something seems a bit off ...

Could it be the same person taking out his bad luck on Mesa, by trying to **** to whole lineup of TA-30s as being problematic?

guitarrhinoceros said:

Why is it that the people who are severely bashing the TA-30, on this forum, happen to only have around two total posts each? It's like these people don't have the time to come to forums to begin with and share their joys of their new purchases. Yet, they take the time to create a few derogatory posts.

Something seems a bit off ...

Could it be the same person taking out his bad luck on Mesa, by trying to **** to whole lineup of TA-30s as being problematic?

Click to expand...

guitarrhinoceros,

I came to this post to discuss problems I am having on a brand new amplifier. This is my first mesa amp which is very expensive, and I expect no noise, no tube problems, or anything else for that matter. The amp sounds great and is very versatile. I have no problem with that. I love it. But my concerns reflect the title of this post. I was looking for information on these problems, and I found this forum to be the best place to find it. I am new to mesa and new to this forum. That is why I have no more than a few posts. Call me new or whatever you like, but all I am looking for is information. I never had time to share the joys of my new purchase because I encountered problems from the start. I plan to search this forum and add my comments on other posts praising the amp, as well as other mesa products I plan to purchase. But for right now, I'm worried about my amp going nuts or catching fire during the church services I play on Sundays. :mrgreen: