No Master Volume after lightning strike - Roadster Head

The title sums it up.
My house was hit by lightning today, thankfully it didn't start a fire. Strange problems with several of our electronic gadgets as one would expect.

I went to play my guitar tonight and had very minimal sound. Checked all of my tubes. Looked ok... still no change in loudness no matter how much I cranked the master and solo knobs. All channels the same. I decided to turn up the master on each individual channel and voila I had sound. Each channel still works, the sounds are not my normally massive sounds but it gets louder. Any ideas on what may have happened? Is it something to do with the power amp (vs the pre amp). I know just a little so I don't really want to mess with it but then again if it's something simple I don't want to have to take it in for service.

BTW I removed all extra stuff from my rig while diagnosing. No effects pedals, no fx loop, plugging directly into the amp with a guitar and the head is plugged directly into the cab. I even changed the cable connecting the cab to the head just in case that may have been bad.

Any ideas?

Is your FX Loop Hard-Bypassed? If it is the Output & Solo controls will also be bypassed, leaving your individual channel masters as the volume controls.

If the loop is taken out of Hard-Bypass and the Output & Solo still do not work try changing V5.

2manygadgets said:

Checked all of my tubes. Looked ok...

Click to expand...

How did you check them?

Glad to hear no one was hurt & no fires.

Dom

I've been rewiring our home network all day and this is the first time I've been able to check the board. Lightning took out my wife's NIC and mine too.

Anyway, good questions. I checked my power tubes by putting in the original ones that work fine but I had bought a matched quartet of JJ's. I looked at my preamp tubes but couldn't really tell much just by looking at them and I didn't have enough to swap out all of them. I don't think that it's in hard bypass. I'll need to double check. I have a couple preamp tubes that I know are good. I could try one of them in V5.

Thank you very much for your suggestions! I'll report back with what I find.

It was not in hard bypass, I replaced the V5 tube with another spare that I have and no difference. Any other thoughts?

That is strange behavior. Your best bet at this point is to call Mesa, they will steer you in the right direction.

Good luck, post your progress.

Dom

OK, a little more figured out... I had two preamp tubes that were bad. Now I have some sound back but it's not quite right still. Still no master or solo. When I turn up each individual channel masters, it gets kinda loud but not mind blowing 100 watts of power. It's just a little louder than bedroom level I would say. I did a hard bypass on the FX loop with a patch cable too. There is VERY little sound with the FX loop engaged. So I think my FX loop is bad but I'm still worried that if I get the FX loop fixed that something else might be wrong since when it's bypassed it's not incredibly loud. I'll put it this way, I don't cringe when I have the volume on the high gain 4th channel turned up to 10. It's just not 100%.

I'm taking it to a guy this Saturday who's a referral from someone else I used to play in a band with. There are no Mesa authorized repair shops within 75 miles of where I live. I used to use a guy in Beloit WI who was fantastic but when I called him he said he's retiring at the end of the year and isn't taking any new amps.

Any other thoughts about this? I'm still just freaking out that the amp might never be the same and we have a $1000 deductable on our house insurance so if it's something really bad, it'll be a very costly fix.

Which preamp positions did you change (V1 is closest to the input jack)? The tube that drives your FX Loop is V5 and you should change it with a good tube to see if you get your FX Loop volume back to the bypassed level.

What happens when you change Rectifier (Diode/Tube) & Power (100W/50W & Bold/Spongy) settings?

Dom

I changed 4 & 5. I did double check it again with another tube but no difference. When I change Rectifier from Diode to Tube the sound gets a little less crunchy as one would expect. Same for Bold to Spongy. No noticeable difference in volume though and no difference when it comes to the master and solo. Hopefully this guy will be able to figure it out.

OK, thought I'd follow up and report back about my Roadster. I ended up shipping the head back to Mesa. Turns out that there were 4 J175's, 1 6426M and one screen resister that burned out. Thankfully, I got it back from Mesa and it's back to it's perfect sounding self again. I really missed it.

I'm glad I sent it to them rather than taking it far out of my way and leaving it to any techs that I wasn't familiar with. Mesa was totally fair with the charges and I have to say that I spoke to a guy named Rich there who was so helpful and really made the process fast and easy for me. It's few and far between that a company lives up to it's claim of great customer service but I feel like I was treated like a VIP which really is cool considering I'm no where near that

Might sound silly but I feel more committed to buying their stuff than ever before.

Wow! This is why I don't leave my amps plugged in!