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Pieced together a half stack and I have a small issue.

1K views 2 replies 2 participants last post by  VHF 
#1 ·
I picked up a well used JCM900 1960 Slant cab and a Randall RH200 G2 200 watt head. The head looks to be very well cared for. A little dusty, but not worn or marked up.

The cab has at least one bad speaker from what I can tell without cracking it open. It works and sounds great when it's split and I only use two speakers. One of the other two speakers make some unpleasent sounds when being played through. Not a big deal to fix, but what speakers would be the correct replacement?

The head has an issuse that I'm more tweaked about. If you're not familiar, I'll give you a quick run-through of the head's features.

It has 2 channels, clean and gain. The clean channel is stellar IMO. It also has a boost button for a rather gritty "dirty" driven clean. With a little reverb on, it just KILLS for a blusey tone or a old rock tone. The gain channel is more complex. There is one set of tone and level controls, but two gain knobs with two differently voiced gains, as well as a voicing button that seems to push gain one from a older Marshall crunch to a more JCM900-like growl, and pushes Gain 2 from a mean chuging fairly "typical Randall" tone to a gritty, howling Recto-esque scooped death machine.

The problem is two-fold. On the Gain 2 selection, if I take the gain past 8ish, the amp begins to squeel, much like feedback, but even with the guitar volume at 0. If I switch to the gainier voicing, it's even worse, and breaks over at a lower knob setting. If I unplug the cord from the guitar, still some noise. If I unplug the cord from the amp, no noise at all.

Also, on ANY channel, with basically ANY level/gain setting, adding a distortion pedal in the loop (and I assume into the front of the amp) causes this same squeel.

This noise drifts to the background when you play. The noise caused by the pedals is still fairly audible, but the noise from the internal gain structure is fairly muted when you're playing.

It seems, in my marginally educated opinion, that some residual noise or feedback is slamming the power amp and causing this noise. I'm not sure if a noisegate would kill this or not.

Any ideas/opinions?
 
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