Peavey Artist 120 not working

[flyingtele]

I have a Peavey artist 120 Watt combo amp. It is a hybrid with a SS pre amp and four 6L6 power tubes. Heres what is happening: I turn it on, wait for the valves to warm up, no sound. I turn it off and on again, and sound comes on for about 1 second and fades out and sounds very crackly and distorted.

Can someone please tell me what likely causes of this fault could be so I can fix it?

[Enzo]

Get out the schematic - PV parts will send you one if you need it - and get out your volt meter. That are the voltages doing at the power tubes? What are the voltages doing in the preamp. Isolate the problem, is it a preamp or power amp problem. Apply a signal to the input and see what it looks like stage by stage.

If I had to guess, I'd say you have a DC offset somewhere and it takes a few seconds for it to fully get there as a cap charges. I might predict a preamp stage, but some problem with the screen supply could be the case or even the control grids in the output tubes.

WIthout me looking it up, is this preamp transistors only, or does it use op amps? Or in other words is this just an Artist or is it an Artist VT?