Mesa Express 5:25+ Losing Volume

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mustafaicil

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My Mesa Express 5:25+ started losing volume and sound becoming brittle from time to time. It works fine for a couple of minutes and then volume becomes low and weak. After a couple of minutes volume comes back to normal again and then same thing repeats. Sometimes there is no problem for an hour and then problem happens again. When the volume goes down, the sound is brittle/crackly when I hit the strings. The problem is random. It comes and goes without any change on the amp settings.

I replaced all the tubes, that did not solve the issue. I tool the amp to a local amp repair shop, they were able to reproduce the issue, changed some caps and it seemed to work fine for a week, then same thing started happening. The amp tech is unable to figure out the problem.

I reached out to Mesa and to my frustration, they are not offering any online troubleshooting help. They are just saying that if tube replacement did not help, I have to send the amp to them... to US. I am living in Turkey. Another frustrating point is that the amp is bought from from a local Mesa Boogie distributor, but they happened to end their distribution agreement after the purchase, so Mesa Boogie is just letting local customers hang out to dry. They could have just provided some directions by e-mail so that I can give guidance to our local amp repair tech.

Did anyone have such an issue with their Mesa Express? Any recommendations for troubleshooting or solution?
 
I had a similar problem to what you describe on a 5:25. The sound would get weak, then go to a barely audible volume, then back to normal. I tried replacing tubes, and identifying conditions that would cause it to happen. I was unsuccessful, but the problem seemed to happen most often on the distortion channel. The problem kept getting worse, so I took it to MB Hollywood. They diagnosed the problem as a bad volume pot. I tried to get more info from the tech, but they were extremely busy when I picked up the amp, and he was preempted by other issues.

I went home with the bad pot and my amp. It has been five years since the repair, and no problems since, so I guess that fixed it. BTW, I put an ohmmeter on the pot to see if there was a bad track, but couldn't find any problems with the pot.

Sorry I can't provide any more info, but I would ask your tech to focus on the channel master volume.
 

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