Fender Acoustasonic 30 not working

[rockinjosh]

I have a fender acoustasonic 30 (not the ones with the dsp effects) and the sound is not sounding like it should. When the chorus and reverb effects are switched off and i am plugged in i am getting alot of feedback and hissing and crackling. Then when i turn the chorus on the amp makes a ticking noise and the chorus is not very clear. The amp makes these bubble popping and crackling noises. I've been told it could be my guitar but it is brand new. I have a seagull s6 cutaway. Does anyone have any idea what the problem could be?

[Buckeye]

Probably not your guitar.

I don't think it's your guitar. I think it's the amp. I have an Acoustasonic 30 that's doing a very similar thing. Are you sure about your symptoms, though? My amp starts clicking when I enable the chorus (i.e., no footswitch with the panel switch pushed in). The red chorus LED pulsates, and the amp clicks, but I don't think it's the same rate. When I turn up the chorus speed, the clicking gets faster. It almost sounds like what techs used to call "motorboating". If you have other warbling noises, and if the amp crackles when you pound on the top of the amp with your fist, it's very likely you have one or more loose filter capacitors in the power supply. This could possibly cause the motorboating. Usually, you only need to re-solder the caps and use a heat glue gun to glue them firmly to the PC board so they don't come loose again.

This is not the problem with my amp. Its only problem is the clicking when chorus is on. I got the schematic off the web and am working on it now. I'll let you know what I find. Please let me know if you learn anything else about your problem.

[Buckeye]

Fender Acoustasonic 30 motorboating

I fixed the motorboating problem by tying a couple of analog grounds together. I think it was E and F. This was most easily done by soldering a wire jumper from the body of the "Chorus" pot to the body of the "String Dynamics" pot. I tried to figure out what caused the problem in the first place, but couldn't. I'm not sure about this floating analog grounds design anyway. Seems like having a single analog ground that's tied to the power supply makes more sense.

Let me know if this fixes your problem.

[PurpleRocks]

Hey Dudes

New to this site, and I have a similar problem with a friend's Acoustasonic 30 that I'm trying to help him with... There's an audible noise similar to those described here, but only when engaging the 'Reverb' option - the noise is cavernous and bumpy, and gets louder as you turn up the Reverb pot...

I don't know much about these kinda electronics, but I thought it might be a broken pot, but from the above replies, could it be a grounding or capacitor issue? Please help a confused newb?!

Cheers from the UK

Alex

[soundsouth]

I followed Buckeye's lead and fixed the motorboating (clicking?) problem with the chorus effect. Thanks!

[jlapage]

I have an Acoustasonic 30DSP that I picked up used for an almost giveaway price. It seems to work fine for the most part. Nice amp, effects are pretty decent too. Issue I'm having is that it crackles and the signal breaks up when the volume is turned up all the way to "10". I have several acoustic electrics and the problem only seems to happen when I plug in a guitar that has the preamp/EQ that's powered by the 9 volt battery. Pretty noticeable. The signal will start to slightly break up when I have this guitar plugged in. I also have an old Ovation Celebrity that has the passive pickup with volume and tone control, no battery or pre-amp. When I plug this one in, the crackling and signal breakup at "10" goes away. As a test to isolate the problem as far as the preamp section and power amp section, I took the line out on the back and plugged it into a Fender Frontman 65R amp that I have. Signal breaks up and crackles on "10" with a powered preamp/EQ. Doesn't break up when I have the Ovation Celebrity plugged in. The powered preamp/EQ's I have are the generic 4 band made in China type. Just for the heck of it, I plugged in one of my Les Paul's to see what happened and the signal breaks up on "10" with that guitar. I've seen all kinds of supposed fixes (cleaning the pots, ground issues, yada yada yada) but so far, nothing concrete. I've done quite a lot of electronics repairs in the past back when people actually got things repaired instead of tossing them. So I know how to read schematics and have all the test equipment etc. Just wondering if anyone else has or had this same issue and if so, what is the magic fix.

[Jazz P Bass]

Sounds to me like you are overdriving the input circuit thus the breakup.