Power amp (mesa 50/50) experts?

[11miles]

It was an ordinary day and an ordinary practice like every other practice.

I lite up my rack: mesa, ada, bbe, rocktron, and wait a few minutes. Started playing and my drummer lost his stick so we had to start practicing all over again. In between somewhere i started smelling sth burning.
I went to have a look see behind my rack and a pair of my mesa tubes were glowing like inferno!
I immidiately turned of the beast. Waited to cool down a bit and lite it up again!
The tubes were ali lit and glowing just that one of them (one of the pair that glowed like hell) glowed a bit less then others. It still has that blue, fire like glow but not as much as others!

Now i know that the tube went down, i's just that i do not have expirience with that kind of breakdown.
Normally the tubes should not glow at all this ones does just a bit.

Now the music is still there but not as quite as before.
I know i have to change them, but should i change all of them? or just the pair that has the ''broken'' one!

I know it is a silly question, when it is certain that i must change all of them but my budget is at the moment very limited.

Comments

[Soloist1]

Re: Power amp (mesa 50/50) experts?

Always change every tube in a power amp or power section of a combo or head. They should all be matched and test out in the range your amp requires to be biased properly. Mesa's have a fixed bias so you either have to take it to a good amp tech that can bias it for the tubes that are put in or you can call thetubestore.com and they can get you a set that falls within the range Mesa uses for their fixed bias. I got a set from the tube store for my 20/20 and they sound great and seem to be functioning in the correct range. But the smaller power tubes have a bit more of the ability to do that than the larger ones. Basically it's your call on which to do.

[Cleveland Metal]

Re: Power amp (mesa 50/50) experts?

Ummm... If you smelled something burning... You probably were smelling a grid resistor or something smoking in the amp, considering what the tube was doing. Unless the tube was broke, you wouldn'ts mell it burning.

I would be wary about just tossing another pair of tubes in there if you really smelled something burning. Might hurt them. Maybe time for a tech to look it over.

I had a pair of MESA Mushroom 6L6's do a quite impressive internal sparkle-fest once, and they took out the grid resistors in the circuit quite nicely.

MESA tubes... Hmmph.

[Outlander]

Re: Power amp (mesa 50/50) experts?

11 miles ..... you have mail

[terrax]

Re: Power amp (mesa 50/50) experts?

i had a 50/50 and one channel went out once, and it ended up killing the socket, and some parts inside.

take it somewhere and have them check it out.

dave