Spend some of your tune-up time inspecting your amp and tightening things back down.
The sound from your amp can loosen any fastener over time.
Scrub the pipe cleaner in and out of the opening, cleaning the inside of the contact pin.
Cleaning radiotuner amp contacts free#
Saturate the free length of the pipe cleaner with cleaning solution and stick it into the opening in the tube socket.Do not touch the pipe cleaner while you are scrubbing! This is important for your safety if you can’t be sure you will not touch the pipe cleaner while doing this, get a tech to clean your sockets for you. Hold the wooden stick at least 1” from the pipe cleaner.Wind some tape over the pipe cleaner on the stick to hold it down firmly. Wind a pipe cleaner around one end of your wooden stick, leaving about 1” of the pipe cleaner extending from the end of the stick.Use that hour to obtain electronic contact cleaner, pipe cleaners and wooden dowels, wooden or plastic chopsticks or bamboo barbecue skewers.Unplug your amp and leave it off and unplugged for a least one (1) hour.I’ve spelled it out for you below, but if you can’t follow safety instructions, don’t try this – have your tech do it for you. Cleaning your socket contacts will require a little more caution. Leave the tubes out of your amp for the socket cleaning steps. The fix is to clean the tube socket contacts and tube pins.Ĭleaning your tube pins is simple enough rub a Scotch-Brite cleaning pad on the pins just enough to make them shiny again. Bad contacts make for erratic sound – strange crackling noises and dropouts. Over time, a layer of corrosion will eventually develop on the contacts. You can keep the old one for a known-good spare, or better yet, get a fresh box of five to keep in your gig bag. Rather than take a chance, it makes sense to put in a new one every few years. It could be months or it could be centuries. How soon this will happen depends on how close to the normal blowing current it carries. Heat from current pulses causes the element to flex slightly, eventually developing thin spots and breaking. As an added bonus, you’ll pay less for your tubes this way, because you’ll have time to hunt for good deals. If there is a spare set of tubes that you’ve already tested in your amp and know work fine, you can simply replace a dead one, even on stage or between sets. This one almost goes without saying, but it’s surprising how many people fail to remember it: the best time to get fresh, good sounding tubes is before you need them. Let’s take a look at a few things you can do to tune-up your gear. It’s a lot better to “change the oil” in your equipment during those rare pockets of downtime than it is to be standing in front of an audience with a dead amp. Just like your car will eventually sputter to a halt and die if you never change the oil, your amp will eventually develop problems if you neglect to devote some time to maintenance.
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