[7stringninja]

Ok, this has been pretty much an ongoing problem with my amp for about the last......8 years or so. Pretty much since a year after I bought it.

It's nothing special by any means. It's a Marshall Valvestate VS65R 1 12" combo. I love it to death though. It's my main amp for recording and live (I don't really play live anymore) but it was a BIG problem.

The clean channel sound HORRIBLE!!! The actual tone of the channel is decent. It's not my favorite, but I like it. BUT, there is audio noise in it. BAD! It's not consistant either. The channel plays fine 80% of the time, but every now and then it will make a HIDEOUSLY loud pop or a crackle or other weird very short LOUD sounds (twice as loud as the guitar is playing at the time). The sound is completely random, not seeminly caused by anything in particular.

I've tried it with about 10 different guitars, and the noises it makes are consitant with all guitars. I've tried adjusting the tone controls to various positions to see if it might be one of the pots. No luck. The gain channel has NO FLAWS. So it must be some part that is unique for that channel. I even had it repaired by an electronics place once. It fixed it for about 3 days. Then it was back.

Any suggestions on diagnosing or fixing this?

[darren]

Well, i would hope that the "electronics place" guarantees their work. If it was making noise 3 days after you brought it home, then you paid them for nothing. Take it back to them and have them try again. Unless you feel they're totally incompetent. Are they a more generalized electronics shop, or do they have experience with amplifiers?

[Leon]

+1 @ taking it to an amp specialist.

[7stringninja]

I had the original repair done about 4-5 years ago. It wasn't a TON of money, but at the time I didn't consider it cheap either.

The problem was lessened when I first got it back, and I was kind of like "Well, fuck it, this will do" because I was without the amp for a week or so. Then I slowly started to notice it come back (I don't use the clean channel very often - no gain adjustment). When I did call back, they told me that since I verified upon pickup that it was fixed, there was nothing they could really do.

I'm not worried about that issue, just about solving the amp problem.

Oh, and I don't recall the name of the shop, but they were the only shop that GC AND a local shop both recommended to me.

[abyssalservant]

. . . Stupid question, but have you tried changing cables?

[7stringninja]

Originally Posted by abyssalservant

. . . Stupid question, but have you tried changing cables?

Yes, many different cables. But even without changing cables I could tell it was not cable-related problem - because the gain channel works fine with the same cable.

But yes, cables have been changed many times.

[Regor]

[7 Dying Trees]

Originally Posted by Regor

[noodles]

The shop you took it too sucks ass. Your description sounds like a classic power caps problem. Does it go away when you roll back the volume on the guitar? Does it have mechanical artifacts at loud volumes (sounds almost like Neo in the Matrix when he takes the pill and his scream turns mechanical)? I bet it is still there on the dirty channel, but you just can't really hear it because the distortion hides it.

I had the same problem on a Line6. I took it to the shop, and it was better for a few weeks, then started again. The shop only replaced one of the caps, and the other one finished going out a few weeks later. Sounds like your shop took the same cheapo route.