tourmaster died

today on me

in the midst of tonal bliss, it just quit working.
i was in half power mode, playing in od1 in 20 watt mode. just to the combo, in 8 ohms as prescribed with no attenuator. guitar straight to amp, as i usually do. abruptly, it just quit and the lights went down.

checked the fuse, and it's burned out. power on, in standby, no lights.

what next?
unplug amp, put in full power mode and 100 on all channels. replace 5 amp slo blo fuse.
switch power on, but in standby, and if light comes on, it's a power tube, correct?

Send Bruce Egnater an email and tell him about it at: begnater@aol.com

yeti":5invs629 said:

today on me

in the midst of tonal bliss, it just quit working.
i was in half power mode, playing in od1 in 20 watt mode. just to the combo, in 8 ohms as prescribed with no attenuator. guitar straight to amp, as i usually do. abruptly, it just quit and the lights went down.

checked the fuse, and it's burned out. power on, in standby, no lights.

what next?
unplug amp, put in full power mode and 100 on all channels. replace 5 amp slo blo fuse.
switch power on, but in standby, and if light comes on, it's a power tube, correct?

Click to expand...

did you bias the tubes to the proper mA rating? maybe its just a case of a failed tube, I know the RM100s get pissy when you run them too hot...I would imagine these do as well.

Bruce is your best bet if you can't figure out as previously mentioned.

thanks fellas. yep, welp. it's kaput.

first thing i did was check if the speaker cable wires were on the posts, as they're not hard soldered (but will be). they were on.

i removed all the power tubes, and put my spare quad in there, full power. replaced the power fuse, turned it on, same thing. it blows the fuse immediately.

yes, it was biased to 132 ma exactly as of last saturday.

i took the chassis out and examined the insides for the past 2 hours:

all the lugs are on all the posts where they're supposed to be. all connections are good as far as i can tell. all the internal fuses are good. nothing is melted and nothing looks burned. it does smell kinda funny, BUT, this amp always smelled like tube amp mojo when it was on, and if i was servicing it, i could always smell that electronic tube amp smell when i was under the hood. by that, i mean....the good smell of a tube amp..hard to explain, but not the fried plastic, acrid, bad smell.

i periodically run the combo speakers (8 ohm load) with my 16 ohm ported cab, for a total ohm load of 5.33. i keep the amp on 4 when i run in this mode. im wondering if the kids were messing around and flipping switches on the back while one of them was playing. i'm pretty lenient about my gear with my kids, and they know how to properly power the rig and turn it on and plug in and whatnot. i'll never know though, cause no one will fess up, esp when they find out the amps kaput.

im guessing OT or PT or caps. im bummed. this amp sounded SO good too....it's almost like i saw it coming too...i kept thinking it was just too good to be true that i FINALLY was able to enjoy my tone and smile ear to ear EVERY time i plugged this in. i did my own "M" mod to it, but that was just replacing 2 capacitors and hard soldered the reverb transformer wires back on the posts, as they were vibrating off (simple soldering), and sinced then, i've enjoyed this amp to the max.

i was tempted to go buy a used TM head at GC just to have as a backup...and now, i may have to do that much earlier than i thought. at this point, even though i really want a fortin bones or a fortin hulk modded jcm 800(my dream amp), i'm not holding that many sheckles on standby.

I'm super bummed.

It is probably a diode failure. I have no frickin' clue what a diode is or how it could fail but when my amp was blowing fuses I contacted the builder. They thought it was the power tubes. When I ruled that out they said it was likely a diode and to take it to the shop. I went through about 7-8 fuses trying to figure out what the problem was. Took it to the shop. It worked fine. He kept it on a load for 4 hours, no problem. I picked it up after paying a bench fee. I've had it for a month now and no problems. We still don't have any fricken' clue why it was blowing fuses? Hope you get to the bottom of it, and I hope its simple and cheap to fix. One of the things that made me wary of the tourmaster was all the features it has, I figured it would be a bitch to have serviced.

The above rambling post was fueled by beer

the impedance switch changes the routing across the Output Transformer, if its expecting to see 16 ohms, and you have an 8 ohm load or worse, a 4 ohm cab, the current can more than double through the circuit. it might be one of the large bridge rectifiers if its anything like Bruce's RM100 design, I don't have a schematic here so its all speculation at this point. my son did the same thing to one of my RM100's a while back...its just an amp and shit happens.

yeah, im with you there. really, no sense even bringing it up to them. im not sweating that. i can put a piece of tape on it (like i was going to anyways!!!!!) after it's fixed. i just want my tone back..it's been a rather uneventful night
i could've swore i originally posted this in the egnater section...strange.

I've never been impressed with Chinese amps or guitars, they lag behind the reliabilty curve of American or British products, China also goes for quantity vs quality IMHO.

I owned on Chinese amp i got from a friend, everytime i used it i felt like the same thing that happened to Yeti would happen to me, i modded the piss outta it and it still sounded [meh], couldn't get rid of it fast enough. The trannies were hot enough to cook your meals on.

damn good time for a BONES. (like me, gotta trip over a couple grand just laying on the street first though)

bubbastain":1j65ke07 said:

damn good time for a BONES. (like me, gotta trip over a couple grand just laying on the street first though)

Click to expand...

+1 am headed to the casino tonight to coax a new Axe2 and Nuemaan U87 out of a neighboring Tribe...

charveldan":23aobblg said:

I've never been impressed with Chinese amps or guitars, they lag behind the reliabilty curve of American or British products, China also goes for quantity vs quality IMHO.

I owned on Chinese amp i got from a friend, everytime i used it i felt like the same thing that happened to Yeti would happen to me, i modded the piss outta it and it still sounded [meh], couldn't get rid of it fast enough. The trannies were hot enough to cook your meals on.

Click to expand...

well, i traded a boogie heartbreaker for it, and the HB was a gift like 12 years ago, so, im only out the money i put into it, which, at this point, is tubes, if you wanna be technical.

i love the tone of it, it never got hot. im not defending it, just giving my perspective. i love the sound of the amp.

Do you know where the particular fuse is connected? If I remember, Bruce is one of those that puts in like 5-8 different fuses for different possible failure points. Probably one for the OT, PT heater/filiment, PT mains, B+ DC tube bias, and I think several other high power spots as well. If you knew which one blew, you'd have a pretty good clue where the problem is. It could be a short somewhere or a bad part. It sounds like, from the way the fuse is blowing, that it's a short. If you were in and out of your amp, you could possible have folded a part down that touched another lead, or a cap you added could have been soldered to a conductive area of the PCB board.

No way to know for sure. You might want to ask Bruce. That's always the grail. Or just post it in the Egnater forums here on Rig Talk. Bruce and Ian answer a lot of questions, or refer you to their tech.

You've got a dead short somewhere. Should be easy for any qualified amp technician to diagnose.

Hope it works out, sick amps are no fun.

Heard a lot of similar stories about the TM.

But I played a Renegade 65 head a while back and loved it. If I'm ever in the market for a Chinese channel switcher, that'll probably be the one.

the mains fuse near the power cord that you can access without taking anything apart, save for the little plastic drawer that slides the fuse in. im pretty confident my mod is fine and the work i did on it isn't the problem.

i checked all the other fuses inside, there are quite a few, and all look ok.

could be, well, anything really, like has been said above. i will obviously keep you peeps posted. thanks for the supprt and info. the bummer is the nearest eggie service center is far. like 120 miles far.

anyone in pittsburgh PA area recommend a good amp guy ?

yeti, did you send an e-mail to nate@egnateramps.com yet? I know you've had the amp for a while, so I'm not sure of your warranty status, but he can probably help you out with figuring out what happened before you go find a random tech to work on it. I don't check every thread all the time, so shoot me a pm if you have any questions about getting it taken care of.