A mysterious popping sound.........

Hello,

First post here. Nice site so far.

My 212 Maverick will pop intermittently, with or without pedals, with different cables, with different guitars, etc.
It is a single, audible pop. Last night at rehearsal it was fine until it had been on for about 1 1/2 hours and then popped about every 10 minutes. :?

Any thoughts? Do I need to replace tubes?

Thanks,
Dale

Are you using a power conditioner? Had this prob before, and found it was caused by a small refrigerator in our jam room on the same circuit as my amp. Try plugging in somewhere else, or better yet use some type of EMI/RFI filter (power conditioner, computer-type power strip, etc).

Yeah, I just recently bought a Furman Power Pro conditioner.
I can't help but think it's a bad tube somewhere.

Thanks for the input

Most likely a preamp tube.

im having this same problem with my nomad 45. it was just retubed with jj/testla tubes although it did not do this prior to the retube, so my guess is that its a nasty preamp tube, although i've found that the popping noise does not occure when the guitars volume is off, which is usually a sign of a faulty preamp tube.

aight, so i emailed BOB at eurotubes about this popping noise, here was his reply...

It sounds like you have a tube that is not seated well or a little dirt or dust in the sockets. If you look at the pins on any tube with a loop or under a scope you will find that they are not perfectly round ( it's not a perfect world ) so when you combine the fact that all tube pins are slightly different with the fact that the split sockets are only contacting a portion of the pins, then add a little dirt and corrosion to the equation, presto, you can have a not so perfect connection. This condition will most of the time cure it's self when arcing occurs which is also the cause of most odd noises such as popping and crackling when new tubes are installed. Most of the time you can avoid these things by cleaning the tube sockets.

It's easy to clean the tube sockets which can be done by removing the tubes and then using one of them, spray the pins with some electrical contact cleaner ( you can even get this at a Radio Shack, they call it TV tuner cleaner ) and then work the tube in and out of each socket a few times to remove dirt and corrosion. If no contact cleaner is available then simply working the tube in and out of the socket a few times will usually suffice.

i did as he recomened and all popping has ceased. give it a try, the guy usually knows what he's talking about.