Danelectro Nifty-Fifty. awful sound

[jessadr]

Got this cool little amp. It has been sitting around not being used. I pluged it up pluged in guitar. No sound just a little hiss. If I turn it wide open and hit the strings hard it has this nasty little sound little a fuzz box. Litey playing is is quiet. Thinking the preamp chip may be out cuz the 2 leds don't light up. I pluged a line 6 pod in front of the guitar and jacked it wide open . Man it came alive. But still that nasty tone. Should I go ahead an replace the 2 tlo72's and start from there?
thanks
Jess

[J M Fahey]

You should start by troubleshooting it, meaning trying to find what's wrong before replacing parts at random.
Post the schematic. Ask Danelectro for it, you might get lucky.
*At least* the user manual.
A couple inside pictures, sharp and well illuminated, may help.

[jessadr]

It is just a simple chip amp with a tda2020 output and 2 tlo72's. No bad looking parts. No bad traces, but doesn't mean nothing is open. going to buypass the headphone jack and check for voltage on the chips. No schematic

[J M Fahey]

Bad or good looking does not mean much
Start measuring that chips get proper voltages on power pins and that there is no DC voltage on signal ones.
Power rails?
What 2 leds do you refer to?
Still suggest you post *at least* the User Manual and a couple inside pictures.

[jessadr]

Will do. Going out of town for the weekend. I will put them when I get back. The leds are used in some kind of tone circuit acorrding to a post I saw on this site.

[J M Fahey]

Mmmmhhh, in that case they should be the Red clipping Leds.
They shine (dimly) only when clipping some guitar signal; so if not, they stay dark.

[Rick Erickson]

Check the pots - if memory serves me, they are what secures the pc board, which also means that if the amp gets dropped they are the point of maximum stress.

RE