In short, I have a London City Bulldog tube amplifier. However, this is a "cheap" copy of a Marshall JCM2000 DSL100, which have been marketed in different versions. Another well-known is the Ashton VP100. A slightly different jacket, but identical on the inside to the London City Bulldog.
Now years ago I had the problem that the amplifier pumped loud pops and rumble from speakers when the standby button was turned on.
Turning the level knob all the way to "0" did not change the volume at all. The creaking and popping remained just as loud.
Can't fix the problem at the time. Then put the amplifier in the corner and no longer used. Now I want to get the amp to work again and I have dusted it again. Now the "noises" seem to be as good as gone, but I do hear a constant hum coming from the speakers. This cannot be eliminated by turning the level to "0".
The volume has dropped drastically. Now I have to turn the level knob more than half way to get a little sound. Where normally the whole street would complain if it was on this level.
Then disassembled the amplifier and now I see next, a number of suspicious capacitors. 2 of which have already burst from the jacket.
The capacitors that have clearly visible burst are the capacitors for the heaters of V1 and V2.
With the other blue capacitors I see no bulging over mess around the capacitors.
To be on the safe side I replaced all the capacitors.
Unfortunately, there is no improvement yet regarding the constant hum coming out of the speaker and the huge dip in the volume.
In any case, I have now excluded that it is in the capacitors. I also measured on the points indicated in the diagram. See image below. instead of +444V I measure +464.6V and where +432V I measure +462.3V. Where I should measure -36V, I measure -39V.
+464.6V compared to +444V seems to me within the margins.
However, I find the difference of +462.3V and +432V. Because the difference in the schematic between those 2 points is 12V. And I only measure a difference of 2.3V.
Is this curious?
What is even more remarkable (or not) is that there is a loop level switch on the back. And when I put a jumper cable in the send and return, I don't notice any difference when I switch this switch on or off.
When I put a pedal between the send and return, it boosts the sound. Is this correct?
I know, there are a lot of questions but I don't know where to look ...
So briefly the problems I have:
1. Volume dropped drastically
2. Constant hum on the speaker. (does not respond to knobs)
Does anyone have experience with this amplifier or related or can someone help me with troubleshooting, I would like to hear it.
Thanks in advance.