Pretty thorough job Chris! You tried to think of all the potential problems with this amp. It's called 'preventative maintenance'. Good stuff! They used lacing twine in Telecom years ago too. They taught us 'lacing stitch', not 'self-undoing stitch', as they called them back then. To keep everything laced in, they'd make us lace in other lengths of the waxed nylon twine along the run to lace up the 'branches'. We'd have to tie a 'constrictor knot' at the beginning of the lacing run, so it would not come undone, being sort of slippery from the wax. They never called it a constrictor knot back then, but my searching has actually confirmed the name. Just TRY to undo a tightly tied constrictor knot! - Ya gotta cut through it! I've managed somehow (?) to have a coupla big rolls of that very same lacing twine here at home! Ssshhh! Amazing stuff; you can't tear it off like electrical tape! - You'll deeply cut yourself! I've laced up a few looms on gear I've built, & even split the twine into thinner halves on the narrower looms, as it can flatten out to almost 3mm wide, which looks overdone. - Still you can't break it though! Ya gotta cut it or melt it! While we're not talking about cable ties, & after you heat tested your threaded nylon standoffs to 360° or whatever it was, I was a little puzzled as to why you didn't just use a nylon cable tie around that pair of 5W resistors, instead of contact glue? You'd just done the proof-of-concept experiment! As far as component leads 'clinched over' on the copper side of the board before soldering, I think it's a good idea. Regardless if it's a pita to replace the component. It gives extra mechanical stability to the joint, as well as more surface area of the component's lead actually soldered. When I built a pcb, I always 'clinch' component leads, except I.C's & sometimes TO-220 power devices. For neatness, I try to bend as close to parallel to the board as possible, & at 45°or 315° to the edge, whichever is most suitable to not have clinched leads shorting on each other. It looks quite neat too, & less kinda 'random'. I do this in preference to bending ' back down towards the track' as you do. - But I get where you're coming from though! I guess in that way I sacrifice a little bit of longevity for neatness! - Just a little though, cos I've never ever had a fault in anything I built or repaired as a result of a dry joint! Yep, those big old 'soldapullit' solder suckers definitely do a good job mate! I've just gotta remember to 'reload' mine over my solder 'ashtray' (a sardine tin with a felt base & a bunch of splashed [ashed] solder in it for weight), as it can spray out little flakes of solder about! Actually Jaycar sells a beige version, & new teflon tips too! - or they used to. I gotta agree with you on the solder braid too. Way too easy to overheat & lift tracks of the board with it. I find it useful sometimes when replacing SMD's (which you said you don't do), when I tin the pad then to get the pad nice & flat again for the new part. I've gotta cut the used part of the braid off very often though, as one false move not melting all the solder in contact with the braid & board will also rip fricken tracks off! Grrr! I'm old school as far as flux goes though. I use the honey type paste stuff. The pens never seem to apply enough for my liking. I'd rather apply too much & just exhale while generating all the smoke, then clean up with an I.P.A. soaked toothbrush/rag afterwards. The lid of my flux was nearly always fricken glued to the mofo jar, cos the flux goes so sticky, so I now just place an oversized plastic lid on top of the jar, & the adhesion of the flux shit securely holds the lid on till I break the seal to use the stuff! That's a nice looking ESR tester you've got there - with variable test frequencies & all! - Noice! I built the 'Silicon Chip' ESR meter in the cheap-ass jiffy box with the two 7 segment 1/2" led displays & a pushbutton. But it works a treat! It measures down to .01 ohms, but at only one frequency, at which I'm not sure. Did you clean the valve sockets? I never saw you do that. Have you seen those tiny little 'bottlebrush' type cleaners you can get for cleaning your teeth? They're called 'Pickers', or that's the brand. You can getem from Coles, & even more sizes from chemists. They're ideal for cleaning valve-pin sockets, with a dash of I.P.A on them. I love your idea of using dividers to set up & bend capacitor leads! I'm gonna steal that one! Actually I just bought a coupla metal nail files from Coles this arvo for cleaning contacts, as you suggested. At $2.50 each I bought two! - Gotta be one of the cheapest tools on my bench! Very handy to clean up my polystyrene military model parts too! Sorry bout the rant. I've gotta get a life! Actually I've gotta get a job! Too young to retire yet really.

4 upgrades that can make these amps reliable for gigging is A hard wired jack Raised ceramic resistors All caps replaced with F&T Replaced zena diodes The amp will then last as long as any amp on the market. These are very good amps once upgraded. I did my first Deville in the 90's and it hasn't missed a beat since.

Love your puppy dups mate! Give him a pat & a scratch on the head for me!

Very nice work Chris. I worked for the telephone company in the states, Bellsouth, back in the day and learned to lace cables, cable ties were not permitted and you took pride in how neat you could dress the cables and lace them in place. Sounds like you had a great mentor that taught you the importance of doing neat work as well as taking pride in the finished product. It shows in your videos and thank you for sharing.

Great work. I had an older HRD that had the +/- 15V dropping resistor overheating and noisy channel switching along with an ultra-sonic oscillation at about 22 KHz that was sensitive to presence control setting (negative feedback) and tube socket flex circuit positioning. It required adding series resistance in the tube grid circuits to kill which was not easy. I think we all should be more vigilant in routinely checking the output with a wideband scope.

Excellent video again Chris!!! So good to have a local Guru!! I really like how you actually show the repair taking place rather than describing it and skipping to the finished task like others do. Nice crisp playing as well mate. Love your work.

Excellent maintenance and repair. And nice playing too.

Extra points for the happy shepherd!

I just tore the pcb out of a hot rod deluxe, a sublime pleasure. I bought it for 400 bucks, and im going to build a hand wired amp in it. 5f6a based. Basically, a 67 plexi - 2203 .. Got a layout from Jake from Jloewenheim youtube. Great guy . Previously, i built a 5f6a- plexi in a deville chassis based on a layout Jake sent me. Beutiful amp. Looking forward to the deluxe conversion. Its a pleasure to tear out all that pcb garbage from the chassis. Its sad that modern amps are built so cheaply , but i guess thats what we can expect with fractional reserve banking... #thecreaturefromjeckellisland Great video, as always !! Keep them coming !!!

thanks for the video. beautiful repair work, beautiful dog 👏

Great job

Nice one Young Chris!!

a divider for bending the leads!! Brilliant!

Hi Chris, thanks for another great video. If I lived in Sydney, I know exactly who I would trust with my equipment. It is a pleasure to watch your videos. Many greetings from Germany🍻🎸

Bloody Awesome Video Chris..! Just fab, all the tips and tech info..Absolute 'ripper' as you guys say..Plus rounded off with a pro guitar demo..Whats a star mate..Love it..Stay safe..Ed..uk..😀

Top job and outstanding video Chris ... you're a master and clearly enjoy your craft ! .... thanks for the excellent "repair" of this new to me amp. PS - I now know whom to go to get my light sabre built 🤟🎸

Another excellent video, Chris. It never occurred to me that the Send/Return jacks could be so problematic. I had a Boogie Studio+ about 10 years ago that had an intermittent issue. I bet you this was the issue.

great video editing, i do guitar amp work in the usa. good organization as well!

I wish you were in Melbourne 😢

Chris! Just found this one m8. I just did this to my HRDx. I have an idea for a video if you’re stuck! Thanks for the video m8 and have a great weekend!

Fenders are very good amps! Only thing I don’t like is the upside down chassis! Valves operated like this going to shorten their life and toast the components sitting above! I.e. Capacitors,resistors etc! Any views on this? Fraser

I mounted Heatsink to the resistors

Good to find an amp genius almost in my neighbourhood. Having watched psionic and uncle Doug for a year or more KZfaq finally offered up your channel. I have a relatively new Princeton 68 custom ,having had the fear of God put into me by Lyle at psionic,would you have any suggestions for looming problems( build inadequacy). I'm on the central coast ,amp techs are few and far between and you are obviously brave and effective enough to expose yourself to keyboard assassins. I have no problems just yet but it's a concern to be realised in the future, sincere regards

Great work, Sir! Are there any similar design/penny pinching flaws with the current models of the Vox AC15C1 and AC15HW amps that would benefit from "anticipatory/preventative maintenance"?

Need you here in the states my deluxe is in bad shape my reverb stopped working

Amazing how Fender designed & built an amplifier with a little care have a very respectable product. The stock speakers they use in Blues Jr are horrible.

I have HRD that I did some mods to make the amp more reliable, the usual stuff. I can't figure out why I have no negative bias. Checked the diodes and changed out resistors in the bias network. Checked voltages, I don't get it. Any ideas???

Funny, I keep posting comments and they disappear

Waterhen!?!?

doggonit its sodder

check your web page inbox

dont know why they still doing it like this, what is the point of it bad reputation and no one who really knows about this problem will ever buy one again!