Fender Hot Rod Deville "more drive" issue

[Alex R]

I think those "illinois capacitors"
puff smoke, and well, I didn't know Illinois was in China.

I do see quite a few failures with the filter caps in modern Fenders, though I doubt whether the fact that they are made by yellow people has much bearing on this. I think it would be worth checking the preamp filters - generally I use the rough and ready approach of clipping a new cap to ground and prodding the +ve lead of the existing caps with its +ve lead, and if that makes the oscillation stop, you probably found the bad cap. They do often show a bit of a leak through the breather hole also.

[Zipslack]

Okay, let's make this really interesting.... I pretty much agree with or at least concede to the logic and experience of Enzo, whereas the advice Guru gives...meh...

Anybody want to start a poll on whose advice they trust/prefer? And, yes, even though I realize JFETs are very easily damaged and opamps almost as bad, I agree that the extra soldering to put in sockets is a lousy idea. Sockets can cause more problems than they cure. Use your soldering iron properly and be prepared to repair lifted pads/damaged traces. I can't believe I'm the only person here that has seen chips "walk" out of the socket from temperature cycling, or get corroded contacts, etc. If you really want to save damage to the PCB, clip the wires below the body of the FET and tag-solder the new FETs to the legs for testing - "a little dab will do ya" and it's easy to swap FETs before commiting to the full desolder/re-solder.

Okay, I'm finished derailing this conversation - now back to helping solve the problem of the original poster....