Smoke from Nomad... :(

Sooo Long story short.. I traded my Marshall dsl100 for a mesa nomad 100 head.
After finding that the foot-switch did not work correctly and some pots were bad I tried to play it and see if the tone was at least worth this struggle to get the pots repaired.

I fired it up and let it Idle for five or so minutes in stand-by and tried it out. It sounded great. Really, I loved the tone. It seems quite tweakable. It sounded good.
I had the master at around 4 and the pre around 5 or so and just jammed for a good 5-10 minutes. I play loud so I want to hear what it sounds like loud.

After a few minutes of liking the tone and tweaking some eq settings and what-not I saw a trace of smoke coming form the right side (output transformer-footswitch input area).

I powered it off and unplugged it.
My marshall has been nothing short of 100% reliable and a great amp. I'm so depressed about this thing that I can;t even look at it..

Ohm's were plugged in correctly and I know my can is fine.
I've never ahd power issues at my 2 year old home before so I can rule that out as well.
Is it possible the footswitch section?

ARGH!!! I'm so steamed.

I'll bet this is going to cost a fortune to have repaired
Does anyone know of a quality and fair priced tech in central ny (syracuse area)

Thanks
Tim G.

This is my first Mesa and I waited for this... hehe I hope it all ends well and I don't need to sell off all my gear to fix it.

If youre willing to look around inside the amp (but dont touch anything!!!) maybe one of the resistors on the power tubes blew. Im guessing you either shut it off immediately or the fuse blew. If the fuse blew then you should just need new tubes and whatever resistor was taken down.

What did you do after you saw the smoke?

BTW I had a Marshall DSL 401 and went to a Nomad 100 head and it was just killer. Once you get this sorted out you will be glad you went through the extra effort!

lerxst88 said:

If youre willing to look around inside the amp (but dont touch anything!!!) maybe one of the resistors on the power tubes blew. Im guessing you either shut it off immediately or the fuse blew. If the fuse blew then you should just need new tubes and whatever resistor was taken down.

What did you do after you saw the smoke?

BTW I had a Marshall DSL 401 and went to a Nomad 100 head and it was just killer. Once you get this sorted out you will be glad you went through the extra effort!

Click to expand...

Here's exactly what happened.

I'm playing along.. and I see a trace of smoke behind the power switch side on the rear. I flip both the power and standby switches off and look on the rear. I see smoke from the foot-switch in put area.

The amp was still working at that point and the fuse is still good.
I have not powered it back on.

Try taking the chassis out and look for scorched parts

Hi,

Sorry to hear about your amp problems. If you need to take it to a tech, I know one in the Rochester area, specifically Chili. His name is John Nau. He builds custom amps, and he is a Mesa authorized repair person. It would be well worth the trip. I have a nomad 100 combo. John did a fabulous job when it had a problem. It has been rock solid ever since. I am not near my desk. If you can't find his number, I will post it. Good luck.

Bummer deal about the amp.

Very unlucky... you traded an amp not especially known for its reliability, that had been fine for you, for one much more reliable, and it blew up .

Unfortunately this can happen - it's all just percentages, even the most unreliable amps mostly work fine and sometimes even the most reliable ones can fail... although it's *usually* a tube fault, and occasionally this does make the screen resistor smoke too - not always destructively. You did the right thing to power off straight away, and you may have saved it. It's probably best to take it to a tech for a check-up though, particularly as you haven't owned it for long and you have no idea what the state of the tubes may be. It's unlikely to be related to the footswitch or anything you did, anyway.