Well THAT was different

[Randall]

During some speaker cab swapping taste tests this afternoon a high ringing rattle of a most peculiar nature developed in a Victoria 5E3 that had another 5E3 clone setting beside it. Chassis from the clone plugged into Victoria speaker. A friend and I chased that sucker for 20 minutes, damping this and probing that to no avail. I removed the speaker (a new Celestion Blue) from the Vic cab, and set it on top of the clone. If I picked it up and move it over the Vic, the ringing came back, like a geiger counter. More damping, removing tubes, touching everything. finally stopped when I touched the speaker jack just right.

It was the switching leaf blade oscillating against the tip connector! What a hoot! And it was loud, too. Surprisingly so. Probably the chassis was amplifying it. Never seen that one before. Of course it could never happen with the speaker plugged in. Just the right circumstances for a very odd issue.

I love this stuff.

[Jazz P Bass]

I like the metal beer caps on the speaker magnet.

[g1]

A friend has a dead speaker hanging on the wall, we play beer cap toss at the magnet, much safer than darts .
Funniest rattle I came across was in a speaker cab. Found a GI Joe doll in there. The port was big enough so the kid could slide it through, but too small for your hand. Front load cab, pulled the speaker and there he was.

[The Dude]

On an only slightly related note: I was once working on a home receiver that had no sound. I chased the problem around for quite a while scoping outputs and everything else only to find (eventually) that the customer's child had inserted a "Lite Bright" peg into the headphone jack muting the speaker outputs. It was buried deep enough into the jack that you couldn't see it. Sure, it's obvious when you find it, but not something you normally look for.


(For those not familiar with Lite Bright )

[drewl]

My son would put stuff in the back of amps when he was little.
A customer returned one of his toys he found in a combo I repaired.
Had a powered monitor that sounded like it had a blown woofer last week.
A few chassis nuts came loose and were rattling around causing the noise.

[Paleo Pete]

I've seen a couple of cases like that.. As a computer repair tech you wouldn't believe the stuff I found crammed inside customers' computers...beer or soda can tabs, puzzle pieces, doll parts, matchbox cars...

I went to an audition one night for a band in Louisiana, took my Super Reverb and Peavey MX and the old '67 Kustom 2x12 cab I run it through, partially so I'd have a backup and partially because I was trying out a dual amp rig. Super Reverb for raunch n roll, MX is clean as it gets. Worked great...for about 20 minutes then the MX started sounding really nasty...I'm talkin' really ugly sounds from a super clean amp that always sounded great. Couldn't figure it out, finally swapped to just the Super Reverb and went on with the audition. Really bad time for this kind of thing, especially after bragging about having "good equipment"...

So I hooked it up the next day to find out what was going on. Speaker jack in the Kustom cabinet was about 20 years old, and had suddenly developed a weak spring, the jack was jumping in and out as it played, making it sound really nasty. So I replaced the jack, no problem. Except that the amp now sounded garbled no matter what I did. I finally sent it in to an amp tech, who swapped my good 6L6 tubes for 4 weak ones (I found that out much later) and found that the power transformer was blown, but still basically working. So the jack jumping in and out like that blew the transformer...I ordered one and soldered it in myself, it works perfect to t his day. So does the Kustom cabinet...

Another time a pickup fell out of my guitar onstage...I Had taken it to a music store and had their "tech" set the intonation. For some reason he also tinkered with the pickup screws, unscrewed one completely, and in the middle of about our 3rd song I was moving around and the guitar started sounding nasty, looked down and the neck pickup was laying against the strings. Took it back and he swore he didn't do it...and never got any more of my business...

Then there was the time some guy dumped a pitcher of beer in one of our monitors 20 minutes before show time...

I don't wanna even think about how many guitar cables I've soldered 10 minutes before a gig...usually because someone either stepped on it or yanked it...guitar jacks broken...

Ain't it fun being a musician...

[Leo_Gnardo]

With some of my customers it's mostly it's the kids prying off knobs & tubes & burying them in the sandbox. Although once I found an envelope with 8 $100 bills sittin' in the back of a Bassman head. The customer was about to buy another amp from me and forgot where he stuck his cash so I was honest and it all worked out for the best.

Another time when I thought there was a blown 10" in a Super Reverb, on closer inspection I found and removed a very dusty Ruffles potato chip from between the frame & cone. Now that was a happy customer! It was his dad's amp and dad played in a somewhat well-known band (Blues Magoos) so it had to be dad's chip, sitting back there for over 25 years. Just a mite past the freshness date.