[EdgeCrusher]

So I was at band practice today getting ready for our first show which is coming up this Saturday. We went through our 7 song set a few times with a couple short breaks in between, and about halfway through the third set we noticed something smelt like it was burning, so we all checked our amps to see where it was coming from and sadly enough it was coming from my Mesa

So I flip on the standby to let it cool down since it seemed to be overheating. A few minutes later I went to turn off the power, but when I flipped the switch, the amp did not turn off; the light and fan stayed on. I flipped the standby off to see if the amp still worked and it did, so I thought, great I fried the power switch. I unplugged it from the wall and let it cool down for a few more minutes.

After a smoke break we decided to finish going through the last few songs. I plugged the amp into the wall and the power come on with the power switch in the off position still. I gave it a minute, flipped the standby and it seemed to be working fine. Halfway through the third song the amp completely cut out and died. No power, no sound. The tubes are less than 6 months old so that shouldn't be the problem. I'm hoping its just a fuse, though I think this may be more serious. So what do all you tube amp and electrical gurus think?

The amp is an '87 Mark III red stripe long head btw, so it is fairly old. I hope its nothing serious, I need this amp fixed by this weekend!

[Psychoface]

im so sad and a mesa of all amps thats not cool mannn

[m3ta1head]

That sucks man

Give mesa a call in the morning, I hear they're great about that kind of stuff.

[skinhead]

Shit, sorry to hear that.

Is really strange what happened. Mesa for sure will fix it.

[noodles]

Sadly, this sounds like something serious. You really can't play around with this sort of thing, you need to take it to a professional. You won't have it back in time for your show, either, so you need to start figuring out what you will do NOW.

Do not, I repeat, do not simply replace the fuse. Fuses blow for a reason, and simply replacing them will expose you amp to further damage.

[ChrisPcritter]

Noodles is a hundred percent correct on this one.. (as usual)
Don't just replace the fuse.. What may be a fairly expensive repair could turn into a complete rebuild. Not to mention if you did try to use it for the show, it will probably give the audience a nice pyro display and leave you ampless half way through the first song...

[InTheRavensName]

Sort out a replacement now (again, Noodles) DO NOT just turn up at the gig and ask another band if you can use theirs...by all means ask, but get in touch ASAP so you have some kind of fallback if they say no...

(again, sorry to hear about it man, hopefully it shouldn't cost too much to have fixed)

[ibznorange]

shit, that sounds nassty. get that fixed, and start calling people to see if you can borrow an amp. no way is that gonna be operational by this weekend

[LordOVchaoS]

It sounds like the power transformer fried but I don't know. Like these guys said just take it to a tech and be done with it. If you don't know what you're doing don't even try it yourself!

[turmoil]

actually, this exact same thing happened to me before with my Mesa Bass 400+ head.

i was at practice and something smelled kind of weird when we took a break but i didn't know any better so when we went to do some more songs eventually the power just cut out all together and it smelled awful.

i took it to the shop and it turned out that it was just the power tubes and some fuses.
hopefully it's just the same case for you man because it definitely sucks