Super Reverb poppin' reverb.

[drewl]

Nice old blackface Super Reverb, came back from cap job poppin' like crazy.

A couple new preamp tubes fixed that, plate resistors previously replaced.

Testing it for several hours/ days to make sure it's okay, then random ghost pops.

Narrow it down to reverb, took a while since it had to be good and hot to pop.

Popping getting more frequent, pull chassis, fire it up and it starts popping tight away, good!
Easy to find!

Then ffffttttt..... blew fuse.
Bad cap? No.
Reverb trans shorted.

Probably because it was in a barn for five months!

[The Dude]

Well, at least the problem revealed itself. It could have been worse and you could have been hunting for days. I like it when things are broken all the way instead of just partially or occasionally. Intermittent problems are usually the most difficult to find.

[drewl]

Ditto.
Took a couple weeks of testing before crapping out.

[Leo_Gnardo]

Reverb trans shorted.

Probably because it was in a barn for five months!

Over the last 10 years or so, I'm seeing the number of arcing reverb drive transformers increase. All a part of the aging process I guess. I always keep a couple of the Fender standard parts on hand.

[52 Bill]

I always assumed that the problem was caused by the lack of load on the drive transformer. Too many loose cables, dirty RCA plugs, broken tank input wires, etc.

[drewl]

Sure, the circuit is a little single ended amp and transformers don't like an open circuit.

Funny on solid state reverb amps, it's usually the output side of the reverb tank that fails, or at least the ones I've seen.

I have at least a half dozen tanks of all sizes and types with bad/open output side.