H&H Super 60 guitar combo

[barkin]

A guitarist mate has one of these, but it no longer works. Apparenly it appears to power up, but he gets nothing from the speaker.

Not much to go on, I know. He'll be bringing it over in the next couple of days, so I'm wondering if amybody knows of these 70's beasts - any common problems, internal fuses that might have popped - that kind of thing?

Cheers.

[rmorris]

Take a look here for 'old' HH service info [url="http://www.majelectronic.co.uk/"]http://www.majelectronic.co.uk/[/url]
Interestingly I note that the HH brand seems to have been resurrected now in West Midlands ( have a google )

Edited September 16, 2013 by rmorris

[barkin]

It's on my reading list - cheers.

[mikeydee]

Hi are Well made amps I have repaired many over the years. But there are common issues around the switches that they use in the control of valve sound, filters etc. Try giving them a little exercise to see if any sound breaks through either rockers or rotary.

Other than that need to isolate the problem. You can do this with patch leads. For example guitar in the front and then signal out from fx send, power amp out or similar to another working amp Will tell you if the preamp is working.

[barkin]

Cheers - I've got it here now. Impressive bit of carpentry - must weigh about the same as my car!

A quick squirt of Servisol in the pots, jack sockets, switches etc, and channel 2 seems to be working fine. (the distortion's pretty crappy, but clean with my Strat sounds surprisingly nice)

Channel 1 is rather sick though - effects send, into another amp, gives no output at all unless the onboard compressor's turned right up, when it gives a very low output that's very distorted. So it looks like the ch1 preamp stage is knackered.

I'll have another poke at the weekend...

[JapanAxe]

[quote name='barkin' timestamp='1380227025' post='2222651']
I'll have another poke at the weekend...
[/quote]

That's one of the things I'd do - poke components with a little wooden stick (save them when you get a takeaway coffee) to detect bad or broken solder joints.

[mikeydee]

That sounds encouraging. If the pre amp is low output then likely to be working but strangled output. To clean pots and switches I use just the tiniest amount of solvent just a half second squeeze of the trigger then turn the pot or switch at least ten times. In terms of the low output prime suspects are dry solder joints, connection points, and components legs. As japanaxe recommends a poke around with music source plugged in and powered on can reveal where the problem is. You have to be very careful though with live apparatus as there will mains and high levels of DC which may even linger after switch off. My personal preference here is for a chop stick. Especially tap away on all jack connectors metal contacts, wires joining the boards and also give controls a bit of a side to side wiggle. Especially anything that controls the channel switching.

Hopefully you will get it back to normal.

[barkin]

Thanks for your input folks - much appreciated.

Had another quick look (working from home today...!) Nothing obvious that I can find.

Done the usual - wiggling/tapping things etc - and none of the components show any obvious signs of damage.

It's got what appears to be a sealed unit called a '21st Century Module' on it too. Not being my amp, I don't know if that only works on that channel - and being a guitarist, he doesn't know either... so I guess it's possible the problem lies there.

TBH I don't think it's worth spending any more time/effort/money on it, and I've now noticed a loud pop from the speaker when it's turned on.

At least it's now got one channel working, so I think I'll just give it back as it is, and suggest he looks out for a new amp sooner rather than later.

Cheers,