I got this amp for my birthday 2 weeks ago and it's awesome. Awesome tone, clean headroom to spare in the band and some awesome crunch, particularly with my Les Paul. However, I noticed 2 things with it that are giving me some concern and I was hoping you guys could help out a tube amp newbie.

1. The volume kind of died out for no reason. It didn't go away, it just seemed to drop a level or 2 for a bit. It was such a surprise that I didn't know if I hit a knob on my guitar or what, but after some fiddling I got it back up to where I needed it. This may or may not be a problem, I just thought I'd mention it in case it sounded familiar to anyone.

2. This is the real issue, the sound seems to drop out. I noticed this particularly on my clean channel when I start digging in a bit.

3. On the crunch channel if I raise the gain it will start sounding out some scratchy static (not from my guitar)

Is this a tube problem, a speaker problem or what? This is my first venture into more serious gear and getting a nearly 20 year old amp, I figured i'd need to do some maintenance. Well, word is tube amps are maintenance period.