Wonder if Jimmie will bid and get Jimbo back?
Seems like that guitar should return to his family.
It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
Finished setting up my Frankenstrat knock-off tonight, including some Cobalt strings to see how that changes the tone and I can definitely hear a difference between it and my Strat. The Strat, with .010 Nickel-wound strings has a distinctly warmer tone, which is making me very happy. So now I have two electric guitars that can produce very distinctive sounds from each other!
Maybe someday I’ll get an SG as well to create another tone option…
Very cool. Keep experimenting.
Thanks for the vote of confidence!
Molly Tuttle is the first woman to win the National Bluegrass Guitarist of the Year. Check out this video where they clamped a camera to film her picking hand. What a treat. And they slow down some bits - not that it helps the impossibility of her precise speed.
Pretty amazing stuff. This is a actually a remix of a Molly vid I saw last year (I could swear it was linked here, but perhaps I saw it on Reverb or just YouTube random guitar vids). I just cannot comprehend flatpicking, it’s just breathtaking to see this type of technique.
I think the tubes may be going out on my Blackstar Ht-20 combo amp that I bought used. No particular special reason, but to my ear, the saturation and sustain have seemed to fade. The sound is a trifle lifeless…but that may just be my ear getting used to it.
I replaced the standard speaker with a V-30 (12") awhile ago, and am happy with it.
I read online that there’s ways to check your tubes…tapping on them with a pencil, checking for scorching, etc. I haven’t taken the back off the amp to do any of that yet but I thought I’d consult with you guys first. I’m no guitar tech and replacing the speaker myself seemed daunting at first but turned out to be surprisingly easy. It uses two 12AX7 tubes and two EL-84 tubes.
I’m reluctant to replace these myself, but don’t really have any money to pay someone to do it. Once I get my tax return, I was thinking about buying replacement tubes, but I know nothing about them. Heck, I don’t even know which ones are power v preamp tubes. Help!
Tubes can get microphonic. Meaning they pick up mechanical vibration and makes sounds.
A Gentle tap with a pencil will confirm the problem.
A microphonic tube makes the same thump, thump just like tapping a live mic with your finger. That’s a very easy test anyone can do.
Tubes can get weak. But you’ll often find aging capacitors or resistors are the real culprit. Bad components gradually alter the bias on the circuit as the components drift out of tolerance.
A technician will check the plate voltages and measure the bias current. It’s not a DIY job. The voltages in a tube circuit can kill you.
I’ve always loved tube amps and serviced them for many years. These days it can be a PITA to find even the common parts. Requires mail order.
For paper capacitors always try to get the Sprague Orange Drops. They were getting hard to find. I’ve heard a new company is manufacturing them again. I’d still prefer the original new, old stock components.
It’s hard to guess without testing the amp.
I can only suggest the preamp circuit, based on your brief description of the problem.
That’s the place I’d check first.
They do sell replacement sets of tubes for the Blackstar HT-20.
There’s no guarantee you’ll fix your problem.
I don’t know if you remember the tube testors ar Radio Shack. People would bring in the entire set of tubes to test. Once in awhile they fixed their busted radio or tv. But many times it was something else wrong.
The easiest fix is when the tubes don’t light up. Most of the time a tube’s filament had burned out. Radio Shacks testor would easily find that tube for you.
But, you said the Blackstar plays. So, it’s not a bad tube filament.
If your really interested in learning basic amp servicing.
Uncle Dougs channel is the best. Good video that covers the 12xa7 preamp tube in the Blackstar and most other guitar amps.
Cathode Bypass capacitors effect gain and tone. That’s probably the Blackstar’s problem. Based soley on the brief description of the problem. It’s something I’d check.
A totally dead amp is easier to fix then a working amp that isn’t performing like it used to.
Yep, based on the description, I agree with aceplace57’s diagnosis. I don’t think it’s a microphonic tube. Those usually sound pretty good until you hit the point where they oscillate and create feedback.
Glad you guys are posting. I have an Amp Guy I found in the Bronx. Because I am not an amp guy 
I looked for a service manual or schematic for the Blackstar Ht-20 combo amp.
No success.
Best bet is let a shop check it. Test the tubes and perhaps change the cap in the preamp circuit.
It’s not a DIY job unless you have experience soldering on a delicate circuit board.
Also ask the shop to check the bias on the output tubes. It sometimes needs tweaking as components age.
I always preferred working on vintage amps. I’ve thought about looking for some that I can restore and sell. Garage sales used to be a great source for amps that spent forty years in the back of a closet.
Clutch your pearls, guitar nerds. There’s a kerfuffle. Trump? School Shootings? Bombers? Russia and Facebook? No, these are not important compared to what is happening in GuitarLand: John Mayer has collaborated with PRS guitars (and Paul Reed Smith himself on this, for 2 frickin’ years, apparently). And he has created the Silver Sky model, which is his/PRS’s new interpretation of the Stratocaster.
Mayer wanted things done to the Strat “Template” to make it more useful to him. Cool. Some of the stuff he wanted - more useful tone controls, and deeper cutaway, etc. - make sense given his playing. Cool.
But to make the model work, it had to update the Fender Stratocaster design to: a) incorporate the changes to the body he wanted; and b) to have a headstock that wouldn’t lead to a lawsuit from Fender AND was unique vs. other Strat-type guitars from other makers.
So they grafted a variant of the PRS 3-on-a-side headstock onto the Stratocaster. The Strat, long held up as the best guitar design ever, enshrined in MOMA’s Design Collection and general held up as the Platonic Ideal of an electric guitar. Famous for its side-profile-of-a-violin-scroll, 6-in-line headstock. THE most iconic shape in headstock land, alongsides Gibson’s Open Book/Mustache, and Martins Germanically-simple box shape.
You can guess how guitar nerds have reacted. You might as well tell them that the Stratocaster’s webshooters are organic not invented, or that Michael Keaton would make an excellent Stratocaster:
53 Pages: PRS John Mayer Silver Sky being released Monday 3/5/18 | The Gear Page
18 Pages: PRS Silver Sky, the most polarizing guitar EVER. | The Gear Page
20 Pages: John Mayer weighs in on his signature PRS | The Gear Page this one is interesting because it starts with a link to a 40-minute Instagram clip of John Mayer walking through the guitar. 40 minutes! He seems to be staying in his Humble mode and does a great job in an unscripted setting speaking about the decisions made regarding the design and all of the quibbles that have been surfacing. Mayer is a gearhead of the highest order when it comes to guitar, amps, watches and cameras, and he’s smart and articulate and smooth, so he can walk through the most arcane minutiae about why the choices were made the way they were.
Posters on that thread are hilarious - they really respect Mayer when they hear him talk gear and play (he plays a lot during the video and sounds super-great).
So, enjoy the kerfuffle. In terms of the actual guitar, by the vids I have seen, it sounds great as a Strat-type guitar. I have no interest in Strats, so that doesn’t tempt me, but it could to Strat folks.
The design, however, IMHO, is awful. You know the Uncanny Valley for human-like CGI, where if you truly try to replicate a human, the CGI’s “off-ness” is that much more noticeable and disturbing? That is how this guitar looks to me vs. a real Strat. I really wish he/they had abandoned the Strat template a lot more.
Mayer should play a Strat if that’s the neck his hands love the most.
I love PRS. My bucket list electric guitar is a McCarty 594. 5k and up.
http://www.prsguitars.com/index.php/electrics/core/mccarty_594_2018
I’m not interested in a Strat copy.
Watch him explain himself, then comment. He’s an articulate gearhead guitar nerd, so you get a very clear sense of things.
Those McCartys get a lot of love amongst the PRS fans out there. I am not a PRS guy, but respect those who are.
John Mayer is a rare commodity these days: a certifiably bankable pop guitar hero, and as such he gets whatever he wants from probably any guitar manufacturer he prefers, including a guitar destined to spark a certain amount of outrage.
If you take as a given that Fender wouldn’t have minded making some relatively minor alterations to the Stratocaster on Meyer’s behalf - and that assumption, given their history, seems entirely reasonable (remember the Clapton Strat, or the Kurt Cobain Whatever It Was Called?) - then one might be tempted to speculate that the real reason behind his migration to PRS would be to generate some free publicity.
Those probably aren’t original thoughts, but seeing as the Stratocaster design dates to 1954 (was that A.D. or B.C.? I’m no longer sure), I’m finding it hard to generate the outrage necessary to wade into yet another righteous indignation thread on The Gripe Page. 