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Started this last night but it got lost in the forum spasm. My 5E3 is oscillating/sounding weird. It almost sounds like reverb or delay gone haywire. I did a search on te net and could possibly be preamp valves gone bad. Anyone here can confirm this before I pay out for new tubes?

k1w1 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 27, 2023 5:56 pm Started this last night but it got lost in the forum spasm. My 5E3 is oscillating/sounding weird. It almost sounds like reverb or delay gone haywire. I did a search on te net and could possibly be preamp valves gone bad. Anyone here can confirm this before I pay out for new tubes?

At idle?
With guitar plugged in and you playing something?
At all volumes?

Can you record it and post it?

Playing notes or chords, hard to describe but like the volume oscillating. I don't have recording capabilities.

All positions of VRM?

Does it have the problem at lower and higher volumes?

Could be a bad or extremely microphonic preamp valve. Try tapping them lightly with the amp on and the volume up a bit. You could also try swapping the two preamp valves around just to see if that changes anything.

Also, give your guitar lead a wiggle in the input jack and see if that aggravates the issue. Oxidation on the jacks can do funny things (including the speaker jack).

If the amp used to work fine and now it doesn’t, volume swells are usually a bad valve, a dirty/bad connection, or (less commonly) a bad capacitor. The first two should be easy for you to pin down.

Was doing it at all volumes. Pulled the jack in and out a few times.

Turned it on last night to check the tubes and it had stopped oscillating. I'll try again tonight and see how it goes. I hadn't used it in a few weeks as was playing the Blackstar Studio 10. Maybe just oxidation or the bugger being jealous about not being used