Quote Originally Posted by bigoldron View Post
Congrats on the amp Duffy!
Thanks Ron. I should take some pictures here in short order. The amp is in beautiful, brand new condition. It must have been in the box. It was built in '10. Hopefully it will not have the channel switching problem, since it is a newer version, supposedly made after they addressed the problem in the mfg. phase - new higher heat rated voltage regulator. It runs very cool.

I guess I should mention some things about my experience with the amp so far, for those that might be interested.

I have been putting a lot of hours on the amp and it has not demonstrated any unusual characteristics. I like the sound of both channels and have been using the drive channel to get some decent tones, no pedals. Right now I'm playing my '72 Fender Deluxe tele RI thru it with the wide field humbuckers, which, by the way, I really like the sound of. It is a great sounding guitar to my ear, and doesn't sound like a typical humbucking guitar like a typical LP. I can't qualify the sonic difference, but it is a beautiful sound. I'm not sure if Fender recently redesigned these pickups or if the redesigned one is just for the new Squier '72 Custom and Deluxe. I played my Michael Kelly Patriot Custom with the Rockfield pickups thru it extensively and it sounded really good. That's a nice guitar.

I'm not using the foot pedal so far, so that might have something to do with not having a channel switching problem. I heard that the footpedal should have a female cable jack installed on it and that it is wise to use a regular replaceable cable instead of the hard wired one that comes with it. I haven't hooked up the foot pedal since I got it home but it worked good at the guy's house when I tested it. I want to find out more about it before I risk messing up a perfectly good amp with a funky foot pedal, if such turns out to be the case.

I took a risk when I got the amp and now I'll have to see how it plays out. It's working great at this point and I have put quite a few hours on it already with no problem.

I hope this amp hangs in there because it has some great sounds going on. Even though it sounds good I probably will change the tubes and have it biased. I think it's a good idea to have someone that knows what he is doing, do the power tube swap and biasing. The guy I go to is a professional warranty repair man for all the major brands and an electrical engineering instructor at Penn State Univ. For now I'm playing it with the stock Bugera labelled tubes, but I'm "not" interested in having a power tube blow out. It sounds good and is running cool, but I just don't trust those mystery Bugera tubes. My amp guy stocks his own JJ tubes and he checks the matched sets to verify that they are closely matched, etc.

He told me that the JJ tubes are made in the old Tesla factory over there in Checkoslovackia. He said it is a relatively new plant and that we, Nato, bombed the original Tesla factory during the Bosnian operation. Imagine that. He says he has had good luck with the JJ's and says they are well made. He pointed out that he has found that a lot of these stock mystery tubes are imposible to identify the actual manufacturer, but he strongly suspects some specific Chinesse mfg's and suspects that a lot of problems he has seen with blown power tubes is due to poor manufacturing. With that in mind I think it is worth the expense to hedge on the side of prudence and get the cheap stock tubes replaced with some quality JJ's.