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Comments
My S1 *feels* pretty solid and well made but It failed twice in the first nine months or so I owned it.
Regular readers may recall a saga when I was without the amp for about 8 weeks with what turned out to a dodgy power valve (hence not under BS's control, and they did revalve the whole thing, all the power valves, pre-amp valves and all and only charge me for one EL34) because the one tech who was qualified/experienced to work on them was out sick (again not entirely BS's fault, and certainly not the fault of the tech concerned who turned out to be absolutely lovely and bent over backwards to get the amp back to me to meet a deadline once he was back in the shop)
The second failure was in the return side of the FX loop (which left the amp otherwise fully functional) but was turned round promptly, efficiently, and fuss free between gigs with a replacement FX loop board.
I'm willing to write off the first failure as outside BS's control (there's a reason why amp warraties don't usually cover valve failures for the full warranty term) and the amps been trouble free since over a year or so of weekly rehearsals and gigs but I'm still slightly concerned that the service department had a single point of failure and that some failure modes (like my FX loop failure) are apparently only fixable by board level replacement...
My comments only relate to the HT5 ..... because that was the amp the threads about. That is a very well designed and built little amp. I have done about 300 gigs with mine over a 3 year period and the only failure was a valve .... or technically half a heater in the valve ..... which still isn't fixed but works once the valve gets hot enough
The amps left in the van with no cover in all seasons so it's not got an easy life
So given that the FX loop board probably doesn't contain any very big parts and hence isn't an expensive assembly - and they had to have it out anyway - I can perfectly understand why short-cutting the process and simply fitting a new one at that point is the best solution. You might also find that if there is a history of that fault, that the new boards have been upgraded, so it's even better than repairing the old one.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
All the above are examples of recent board repairs I've done for out of warranty repairs ..... where the official answer was change the whole PCB.
Working on a lead free modern board is time consuming and difficult to rework unless you have a lot of experience. A sends return board with sockets and (maybe ) buffer opamps would cost less than an hours minimum wage labour
Arguably that shouldn't matter, because (even at pub gig levels of payment) the S1 has already paid for itself and economically I should just walk away from any repair beyond consumables and buy a new one but I grew up in a world where 100 Watt valve amps weren't things you treated like consumer "white goods" and old habits die hard...
Incidentally, in the interests of fairness I feel I ought to point out that while they aren't everybody's cup of tea I really, really, really like my S1-104. Between 4 channels and 6 distinct voices it covers a lot more ground than the unashamedly R-A--W-K cosmetics, marketing, and artist endorsee roster would lead you to expect, the MIDI channel change means it integrates into a system with my Joyo PXL looper really neatly, and, while it's controllable enough to use around the house every time I get to stand in front of it with the volumes up off idle in a decent sized room it makes me giggle like a small child with the sheer fun of the amount of glorious noise I can make with it... :-)
At least with most of this analogue stuff you can still get the components if you have to. The problem with digital gear which often uses custom chips is that you're totally out of luck even if you can work on SM components.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Even when you have "standard" chips, often the code is blown onto them at the Contract Manufacturers using jigs etc that are not available even to the manufacturers of the product.
A perfect example of this is the flash chip on board the Line6 Spider Valve Mk1. No pre-blown chips exist, no code exists to blow the code etc as this was all handled by the CM in China, who has since disposed of all of this. The chip is standard, the code and the method of putting it onto the chip is bespoke and no longer exists.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein