Orange RV50 having bad days!? Anyone ever heard of this?

[Orphin]

OK, so a friend of mine owns an RV50 which sits in our rehearsal room. Yesterday when rehearsing I couldn't use my Marshall so I had to borrow his Orange.
When I strummed the first chords it wasn't a chocker or anything, other than it didn't sound as good as my amp. In the middle of playing our second song for the day the tone had gradually turned to complete cr@p. Like you would plug into a distortion pedal and straight in a mixing console. Aweful sounding distortion, very shrill. Everything that a tube amp isn't.

I considered the amp needed new power amp tubes as both channels acted the same..

Today I talked to another friend and he was rehearsing and he said that the amp sounded super, but he recalled that a couple of months ago he experienced the exact same thing with this amp, but he just thought that someone had fixed it since that. No one have.

From my experiences with tube amps, they are either OK or they aren't. This thing about sounding bad one day and good the next is totally new to me.
Do you guys have similar experiences and/or ideas what can be wrong?

[Neiloler]

Tube going but not quite gone? PCB cold solder joint that is flexing just enough with heat expansion to go in and out of the circuit with some critical cap/resistor combination? You had a headache so nothing sounded good and you didn't like the stuff your band mates have done? The last one has gotten me to hate my equipment from time to time now and again.

[a.hun]

Wouldn't surprise me if it was one of just a small handful of things:

-One or more valves needing reseated because of slightly bad contacts.
-Phase inverter valve going bad.
-Bad power day. Not kidding, shifts in mains voltage can make valve amps sound like s***. When demand goes up the supply voltage, especially near the end of the line can drop by several percent. This can sometimes even shift the bias voltage enough to put the power valve bias out of their right working range. Especially if already biased right near the cold end you might just be hearing crossover distortion because the bias is now TOO low. Then any amp will sound really nasty.

-Or... there is an intermittant fault in the amp. They can be a pain to track down as the amp will almost certainly work fine on the test bench!


Andy.

[misterMagoo]

I have actually experienced this with my amp. Some days it would sound great, others far from it. It was even more apparent in the recordings. I have done many tube swaps, one by one in the pre amp, matched and biased up in the power amp, no dice. Tensioned all sockets. Nothing. At this point I'm actually on the verge of selling the amp, since there are no RV50's in a 100 mile radius that I am aware of to a'b it with.

When I heard the first RV50 i was blown away, it was the reason I bought one. After owning it for 9 months, I've actually become quite tired of the amp, and I can't tell if I have a dud or not. It's really getting to me. When I have the time I am going to take it to the Orange dealer and see if they can at least confirm that it sounds like a normal RV50.

[blackcloud45]

I have two RV50's and have eperienced this as well. I think it probably has to do with the reasons listed by Neil and Andy. Very furstrating though...

[nguideau]

I was going to say, some days my amps don't sound as good as others, but I usually attribute that to my fingers, not the amp.

[misterMagoo]

I was going to say, some days my amps don't sound as good as others, but I usually attribute that to my fingers, not the amp.

Yeah, but I know the difference between a crappy lick, and a crappy noise. I think when you hit an open low e and hear it there is no arguing that its not in the fingers.

[blackcloud45]

In Texas the humidity is so bad right now I believe it can actually affect the tone via influence over the speakers and the air.

[Orphin]

Thanks for all the replies. I can at least say that I rule out bad power and such, as this problem is down to this particular amp while other amps in the same room works fine.
I also rule out phychological problems. I wasn't hearing things. My drummer and bass player usually don't have much to say whether my guitar tone is good or not, but they insisted that this didn't only sound bad, but faulty.

I will definitely try to reseat all tubes and have a look around for cold solders and such, see if I can find anything.

[misterMagoo]

My problem is I have already taken it to a tech and the problem didn't surface. He did a quick check on the board an found no solder issues. Bad component? Someone suggested capacitors recently... I hate chasing down problems.

[baytamusic]

Maybe he got up on the wrong side of the bed?

In all seriousness, this is one reason I really don't like PCB amps with a lot of features. They just have too many factors going against them. Not saying they sound bad or anything, just that there are so many things that can go wrong. Anyways, hope you dudes figure out what the deal is with these inconsistencies in tone. That would drive me nuts.

[tadaitstyler]

I have actually experienced this with my amp. Some days it would sound great, others far from it. It was even more apparent in the recordings. I have done many tube swaps, one by one in the pre amp, matched and biased up in the power amp, no dice. Tensioned all sockets. Nothing. At this point I'm actually on the verge of selling the amp, since there are no RV50's in a 100 mile radius that I am aware of to a'b it with.

When I heard the first RV50 i was blown away, it was the reason I bought one. After owning it for 9 months, I've actually become quite tired of the amp, and I can't tell if I have a dud or not. It's really getting to me. When I have the time I am going to take it to the Orange dealer and see if they can at least confirm that it sounds like a normal RV50.

Just grab a Laney and biamp with your vox =)

[nguideau]

In all seriousness, this is one reason I really don't like PCB amps with a lot of features. They just have too many factors going against them. Not saying they sound bad or anything, just that there are so many things that can go wrong.

I think your description is accurate if you say you don't like amps with a lot of features. But I don't personally see what PCB has to do with it. In truth, PCB is actually going to be the best method to consistently reproduce an amplifier with a low-noise circuit and consistent performance.

In any consumer electronic that's PCB-based, I think the big drawback is that it makes them more difficult to mod and frequently more expensive to fix because the potential cost of an entire board is involved.

[baytamusic]

I'm not going to get into a big pissing contest. I just find PTP amps don't break as often and it seems techs have a much easier time finding and fixing problems. Last I have to say about it.

[not_again]

In Texas the humidity is so bad right now I believe it can actually affect the tone via influence over the speakers and the air.

I have found this to be very true personally as well!