Members TheForkWigger Posted July 21, 2016 Members Share Posted July 21, 2016 What to do when the amp smells like electricity? It sounds great so I'm thinking to leave it the way it is what the Hell do I care? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members DeepEnd Posted July 21, 2016 Members Share Posted July 21, 2016 And by "electricity" you mean what exactly? Burning insulation? Ozone? It's possible the amp is running hot or something worse. If it were my amp I'd get it looked at. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted July 21, 2016 Members Share Posted July 21, 2016 I always wondered what electricity smelled like but I was too afraid to stick the wires in my nose. But seriously, is it a tube amp? The reason I ask is because they run hot and use higher voltages that can physically burn components. Most of what we think of as the smell of electricity is the smell of burning components either from being too close to a heat source or from passing too much electric current. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted July 21, 2016 Members Share Posted July 21, 2016 I suspect he's smelling the components as they heat up. Electrical components are made with various plastic coatings and in fact many circuit boards are over sprayed with a plastic coating to prevent moisture an oxidation. They do give off a distinct smell. Even opening a guitar pedal you can smell the PCB and components many times when they are new. Vinyl on wire insulation and components gives off allot of vapors when the circuits are new. Not much different then a new car but components have their own unique smell. Blown components are a whole different story. The pungent smell of cooked Bakelite and other materials like the lacquer/enamel in transformers, PCB materials, transistor casings, cap electrolyte all have an unmistakable pungent smell of something burnt. Tubes too give off a baked smell, especially s they get older. Tube amps cool themselves by drawing cool air in from below as the hot air rises. With the cool air comes dust and grime. When tubes heat this sticky resin bakes off and has a distinct odor. The key is knowing which of these are normal and which aren't, I can say when components actually blow, the devices don't normally keep operating so I suspect, whatever he's smelling is normal. The exception being if the device is really old and he might have caps leaking. If so I suggest he get those replaced before serious failures occur. Otherwise, is the circuits are new, that new car smell will, given time, disappear. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members TheForkWigger Posted August 12, 2016 Author Members Share Posted August 12, 2016 I mean the Burning Cap Smell of Death that means the amp is about to explode. My amp still works doesn't mell so much now. Don't know why it happened maybe ome oil got in it or sthing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted August 12, 2016 Members Share Posted August 12, 2016 You better get that looked at. Any burning smell isn't good and you should not run it till you get it checked out.If a cap blew you'd know it. The amp would go down blowing fuses. You may have a blown resistor and it may continue to run. Grid resistors commonly blow on tube amps when you have the wrong speaker impedance connected or the tubes go bad. Transistor amps often have Transistors or power supply parts go bad. Transformers can cook for awhile before they completely short. PCB boards can turn black, turn to carbon, short and burn. If you are real lucky and this is a tube amp you may only have gotten a dust ball on a tube which got cooked off, but that's a smell people can usually detect. When components smoke, like the Bakelite on a resistor or a transistor ignites in two the pungent smell its unmistakable. It coats the inside of an amp too. You can smell it months later if you stuck your nose in there. If you know how to remove the chassis, pull it out and give it a visual inspection. Use a flashlight and look to see if any transistors have the part numbers burned off, see if the colors have been burned off resistors, etc. Something cooked and it can only get worse. A resistor costs $1. A transformer seeing the wrong load with that resistor gone will cost hundreds when it blows. EBay is littered with caucuses that could have easily been repaired for peanuts when people first detected problems. Instead they do stupid thing like stick a 20 amp fuse in place of a one amp then watch the thing melt down in a billow of smoke because they didn't trust that safety device and overrode it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted August 12, 2016 Members Share Posted August 12, 2016 Grid resistors commonly blow on tube amps when you have the wrong speaker impedance connected or the tubes go bad. Transistor amps often have Transistors or power supply parts go bad. Transformers can cook for awhile before they completely short. PCB boards can turn black' date=' turn to carbon, short and burn.[/quote'] I haven't seen any grid resistors 'blow' - I suppose it could happen if the tube becomes a short circuit - but I have seen plenty of screen resistors blown to pieces. On more than one occasion one of the 6L6s in my Twin shorted out, took the screen resistor out and blew the fuse. I simply slid the chassis out far enough to see the resistor, removed the associated tube and one from the other side of the push pull, slid the chassis back in, replaced the fuse and continued the set. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phil O'Keefe Posted August 12, 2016 Share Posted August 12, 2016 I mean the Burning Cap Smell of Death that means the amp is about to explode. My amp still works doesn't mell so much now. Don't know why it happened maybe ome oil got in it or sthing wbagnfarb. Described like that, I'd say it deserves an immediate trip to your local qualified technician to have it checked out. Especially if you think you might have spilled something into it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members *BLEEP* Posted August 13, 2016 Members Share Posted August 13, 2016 What to do when the amp smells like electricity? It sounds great so I'm thinking to leave it the way it is... If you haven't turned the amplifier on for several weeks, and it's been humid, and maybe you've been storing the amp in a non-air-conditioned environment, the choobs may be burning off a thin glaze of mildew that has settled upon the surface of their glass exteriors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members nice keetee Posted August 13, 2016 Members Share Posted August 13, 2016 I'd keep a close watch/smeller, don't leave the amp on and then leave home to go shopping... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members WRGKMC Posted August 14, 2016 Members Share Posted August 14, 2016 Grid, Screen, same thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members onelife Posted October 1, 2016 Members Share Posted October 1, 2016 I usually think in terms of control grid when I hear the term 'grid' used by itself. Where I come from, the screen grid resistor is often referred to simply as the 'screen resistor.' Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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