Friedman BE100 1 week old has problem.

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mark5152

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got my be100 a week ago, its worked perfectly until this morning. it turned it on and a loud pop noise came out of the speaker, I looked in the back and the far right 2 power tubes were lit up like fire in them. any ideas on what may be the problem? im hoping sweetwater will send me another one if its a big deal. anyone have any ideas? thanks.
 
The power tubes are red plating, the tubes shipped in the BE100 are jjel34's which sound great in the amp but are a durable as shit. If you emai FRIEDMAN and tell him the number written on top of the tubes he will send you a quad of tubes but he will ask for your quad back so he can get credit. I went thru the same thing. Since he will send you a quad with the same ratings you won't need to get it rebiased. Sweetwater will just you another amp, either way you will be good.
 
It could be the tubes themselves, but the bias could also be off. Do you have a way of measuring bias?
 
thanks, I emailed david. any other brand that's better? im gonna want to have another 4 on hand live just in case.
 
just looked thru the back at the tubes and they say ars. so they are not jj's are they?
 
they are labeled from JJ for ARS, they say they test and match each quad. Dave also likes the Ruby bstr EL34 and I tried them but the JJel34 has a better Marshall mid voice to them. Once you get a week or so with out any failure the jj 34's usually last for a decent time its usually the first few days when they fail. JJ makes a el34 and a el34l, you want the cheaper el34 the L is to be the same tube but they say they test higher and from my findings they are less prone to early failure but they sound thicker in the bottom end and not as sweet in the mids so I always just stick with the regular jj el34's. I you buy a quad of JJel34's from a good tube store who actually tests and burns them in for 24 hrs you should be free of the early failure. Check with Laura the Valve Queen, I know Doug from Doug's tubes doesnt sell the JJel34's anymore due to the amount of failures with them.
 
cool, i went to valve queen and they are out till the 20th today, so monday i will give them a call and order a set. then i gotta figure out how to bias the amp with the new ones.
 
Don't forget to check your screen grid resistors (usually 1K/5W, mounted on the power tube sockets). They sometimes burn up when a power tube goes out, so I consider it part of normal maintenance to check them when replacing output tubes.

I like JJ EL34s/E34Ls, never had a problem with any of them. It's the New Sensor fake Mullard LE34s that I had the most trouble with. I bought 10 new matched and tested pairs from them a few years ago when they first came out, and six of the ten pairs would go into runaway and burn up after a few minutes in an amp with only 380V on the plates.
 
dude....no offense, but judging from your lack of knowledge, you either need to send the amp back to Sweetwater or call Dave. one tube flashing can be attributed to a bad tube. two tubes side by side would be indicative of something else. chances are that whatever caused the tubes to fail will occur again when you retube it. what needs to be done is to pull all the power tubes and measure the pin out voltages of each socket. there could be some ground fault or a bad socket involved. its quite an expensive amp to mess with when you don't know what you are doing.
 
I think I responded to you via email. Give me the number on the tube and we will send you a new set asap. All you will have to do is put them in. End of story. Please email me the number and your address they will go out monday. Do not keep playing the amp.
 
sweetwater already sent me a new amp and im sending the other one back Monday. until then im just using my smallbox 50. thanks guys.
 
I've had plenty of bad JJ EL34s. I am nearly ready to make a switch...
 
I've used JJs almost exclusively, so I don't have any suggestions beyond those at the moment.
 
mark5152":1iy43d72 said:
sweetwater already sent me a new amp and im sending the other one back Monday. until then im just using my smallbox 50. thanks guys.
Click to expand...

There you go....tubes red plate, get a new amp. :lol: :LOL:
 
jcj":34lsbihp said:
mark5152":34lsbihp said:
sweetwater already sent me a new amp and im sending the other one back Monday. until then im just using my smallbox 50. thanks guys.
Click to expand...

There you go....tubes red plate, get a new amp. :lol: :LOL:
Click to expand...

yea, I just hope it doesn't happen again. ive had the smallbox for awhile with no issues at all so hopefully the replacement be100 will be fine.
 
mark5152":3egpbky2 said:
jcj":3egpbky2 said:
mark5152":3egpbky2 said:
sweetwater already sent me a new amp and im sending the other one back Monday. until then im just using my smallbox 50. thanks guys.
Click to expand...

There you go....tubes red plate, get a new amp. :lol: :LOL:
Click to expand...

yea, I just hope it doesn't happen again. ive had the smallbox for awhile with no issues at all so hopefully the replacement be100 will be fine.
Click to expand...

Pretty sure you're good. :thumbsup:
 
yep im sure it will all be good. except now Im considered an amp snob for owning 2 friedmans.lol!
 
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