I jam with a couple of buddies and one of them built a shack for us to jam in. We live in town so he built the shack at his parents house in the country to avoid noise complaints. There is no power ran to it so we use a generator to power the place. We've been jamming for about 4 years on this set up. I started playing on a peavey prowler tube amp when we started. I played on this for about 2 years. No problems. Then I bought a Marshall solid state and played on this for a while. No problems. One of the other guys was playing on a peavey 5150 combo for about a year and a half, no problems. Then one day the 5150 quit working, no noise or smoke, just wouldn't even turn on. So we plugged in the old prowler, played on it for a couple minutes, then that quit working too. We didn't think much of it. We continued jamming for probably half a year on our solid state amps, no problems. Then last weekend a guy I work with came to jam with us. He plays an Egnator rebel 30. He plugged it in for about a minute and it started making noises, then fried. This week I purchased a Vht Special 6. Was excited to play it full volume, but when I plugged it in at the shack last night, I turned it on to warm up the tubes and had it plugged in for maybe a minute and it started smoking bad, and fried. That's four tube amps blown now. I am wondering why this would start happening when we played for 3 years on tube amps without any problems and now we can't even plug one in? All of our solid state amps have had no problems, nor has the PA system or other electronics. No changes have been made to the generator. I'm not sure on the size of the generator, I know its a Honda. Is there something you can do to protect the tube amps?
If the regulator fails, usual after a few years, over voltage will be supplied. Get the generator serviced.
Thanks for the input, we'll have to get that checked out. So are the tube amps just more sensitive than most electronics? Are the other electronics all at risk as well if the regulator is shot?
Sometimes the lock nut on the idle control rattles loose on small generators........higher idle equals higher output voltage.
Anything you plug into the generator is at risk with the exception of maybe a light bulb.
Get both the frequency and the AC voltage checked. One this is done keep an eye on it. Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea to have someone install a volt meter on the generator.
Every time I lose power and have to power my house with the generator I sometimes have to adjust the idle. What I do is after the generator is warmed up I check where it's at. Then I flip the breakers over to standby power. I then monitor the output with my multimeter set on Min/Max to see what the average is. I try and shoot for a 118-120 average, meaning when loads like fridges and such are on it might dip down to 115 and with the loads off it might go up to 125.
Like I said there have been times where I have had to adjust the idle due to different gas, air temperature, etc...... I specifically remember seeing something over 130v before I switched the breakers to standby power so I adjusted it down or up to prevent breaking electrical equipment.
It's unfortunate that you and none of your friends thought of checking the voltage before plugging in expensive equipment, a $10 multimeter would have probably saved you guys a serious headache and a lot of money. Truly a shame sorry to hear.
Like I said there have been times where I have had to adjust the idle due to different gas, air temperature, etc...... I specifically remember seeing something over 130v before I switched the breakers to standby power so I adjusted it down or up to prevent breaking electrical equipment.
It's unfortunate that you and none of your friends thought of checking the voltage before plugging in expensive equipment, a $10 multimeter would have probably saved you guys a serious headache and a lot of money. Truly a shame sorry to hear.
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