New Member w/ Egnater Rebel 30 Issues [VIDEO]

Hi all, I was referred to this forum by my duplicate post on The Gear Page.

I'm having some issues with my amp, so I've signed up to a few guitar forums hoping to find an answer. To give you a bit of background on myself, first and foremost I think you should know that I'm a drummer. Please don't throw things at me. As such, I don't know too much about guitar gear or the technical side of guitar amps, although I'm not incompetent. So it's entirely possible that these "issues" aren't issues at all and are totally normal, but I don't think that's the case.

Here are my problems:

1) Channel 1 has a hum/buzz/static sound, even with nothing plugged in. The sound is much louder than Channel 2, even though Channel 2 is higher gain than Channel 1 and set to the same volume. This makes Channel 1 completely useless to me, as I primarily purchased this amp to do silent recording since I live in a small condo. Channel 2 in comparison is almost completely silent.

2) If I tap on the amp head, a rattling sound comes through the cab pretty loudly. It doesn't matter where I tap on the amp, and knob or switch positions do not make any difference. This doesn't seem normal to me. Please, no "smart guy" comments like "Well, don't tap it and it won't happen anymore." There are no audible physical rattles coming from the amp itself. And later in the video, I just flick the Channel switch and the sound still comes through, and it's so light that I don't think any vibrations through the amp are the cause of the sound.

I have already replaced each and every tube one by one and there was no difference. I also have a Fender Champion 600 and a Vox VR30, both of which are dead silent. I understand that I can go to a music store or guitar amp technician, but with it being so close to Christmas, I'd rather not trek out there at this time... but I'm curious to see if anyone might know what the cause is just by watching the video.

Here's the video: https://youtu.be/-dU9dRujvKo

Thanks for reading and watching, and any help would be greatly appreciated.

I've done some searching and reading on this forum and it seems that the Channel 1 hiss is a common problem. Strange - I've recorded a full length album with it and never noticed the hiss before. Ok so I guess I'll chalk it up as "normal". I'll just try to find some quieter tubes and see if that helps. So, let's just move on to my 2nd issue with the tapping.....

If its only on the clean its gotta likely be a microphonic tube , the strange thing is you replaced all those ?? If youy turn tube mix all the way to 6v6 or el84 on that ch does it get better or worse?

is there a ground lift switch on back on amp

try a different room in your house ,different outlets ,

Well folks, I have to admit something. I only had one replacement of each EL84 and 6V6. As such, when I was doing my tests replacing tubes one by one, there was always one of the original EL84s and one of the original 6V6s plugged in. I figured if it were to be a tube issue, it was going to be one faulty tube. It was both EL84s. I also wrongly assumed that if the tube mix knob was 100% at 6V6, the EL84s would have been taken out of the signal path entirely, so I ruled out power tubes early on when I realized the sound happened regardless of which tube mix setting I had set. I swapped both EL84s with a new pair and now the amp is silent when tapped. This is how you learn.

So onto issue #1, the channel 1 hiss. I noticed that if the volume knob is all the way down, the hiss is still there, but passable. If the volume knob is anywhere between all the way down and all the way up, the hiss is quite loud. If the volume knob is all the way up, the hiss is much quieter - about the same as when the knob is all the way down.

Have you tried other outlets rooms?

Do you have a noise gate you can put in loop ,Although it's strange noise is not interfering on the Hi gain side and only on clean

gtr31":3dpuxnae said:

Have you tried other outlets rooms?

Do you have a noise gate you can put in loop ,Although it's strange noise is not interfering on the Hi gain side and only on clean

Click to expand...

Yes I have. I've tried straight into the outlet, into a run of the mill power bar, as well as my Furman PL-8. No audible difference.

I decided to play around with a few other preamp tubes and my SPL meter right up on the speaker touching the grill cloth. With all the stock tubes and volume, treble and bass full on Channel 1 with nothing plugged in, I get about 66-67db of hiss. I tried a the stock Sovtek, a Groove Tube, an EHX, a Mullard and a cheap Chinese 12AX7 in V1. The Chinese tube was microphonic so I pitched it. The Sovtek and EHX put out 66-67db of hiss in V1. The Mullard put out 68-69db in V1. The GT put out 69-70db in V1. I also found a GE 12AT7 in my collection, put that in V1, and got 64-65db of hiss. So barely any differences swapping tubes in V1.

Then I moved onto V3. The Sovtek and EHX put out 65-66db in V3, the Mullard put out 66-67db in V3, and the GT put out 68-69db in V3. Then I tried the GE 12AT7 in V3. 52db of hiss! That's a 15db drop - about half the perceivable hiss than I started with. And the tone is good to me - more headroom and more sparkly hi-fi sounding clean.

I'm happy. Call this one closed.

I think you found a new way to test tubes. LOL!
Enjoy the amp!