[allthumbs56]

Hey all,

I took delivery of a 2001 DSL401 yesterday, fired her up and the reverb does not work - turning it up just produces a hum. Now I knew going in to this purchase that these things are known for reliability issues but the seller assured me that everything worked great. I had intended on opening her up tomorrow to look for signs of overheating but I'm wondering if this could be a problem within the tank itself.

I check the connections to the tank and they seem fine (and on the right way) but the tank itself doesn't seem to make any "springy sounds" when bumped (any other reverb-equipped amps I own have always made that "sound" when sat down hard or bumped a bit). Does this sound like there could be a problem in the tank itself? If so, can they be repaired or do they need to be replaced? I'll be opening her up tomorrow to look for bad solder joints and wonder if I'll find the problem here or if it's more likely that it's in the reverb unit itself.

The seller claims that everything worked fine for him so it looks like I'm probably on my own here. Any ideas would be very welcome.

Thanks.

 

[zdogma]

Solder joints seem like a good place to start. I assume that thing has a tube reverb, if so check the driver tube (if you haven't already), shipping damage is pretty common with tubes.

 

[Ripper]

take the reverb tank off and make sure the springs didn't come loose during shipping.

 

[allthumbs56]

Fixed!

Turns out that two of the wires in the reverb tank were bad - one broken and one intermitent. The connectors used were those horrid little "no-solder" things. We tossed them and soldered directly. The RCA cable is a bit flakey too so I plan to replace that with a better quality one soon.

While in there we checked for any potential problems due to the massive heat this design tends to generate and found none. We also mounted a small cpu heat-sink on the bridge rectifier to draw the heat away from the pcb to avoid future problems.

I may also install a cooling fan behind the power tubes but I'm gonna give her some hard use first to see how badly it heats up.

Issues aside, I really like how this amp sounds.

Thanks for your help - you steered us in the right direction :food-smiley-004:

 

[Wild Bill]

Fixed!

Turns out that two of the wires in the reverb tank were bad - one broken and one intermitent. The connectors used were those horrid little "no-solder" things. We tossed them and soldered directly. The RCA cable is a bit flakey too so I plan to replace that with a better quality one soon.

:food-smiley-004:

If you cannibalize any old PC for those 2-pin connectors that come off the motherboard you'll find that they fit nicely on the pins at each end of the reverb tank!

:food-smiley-004:

 

[Budda]

the reverb on my YCV80 died, and everything is wired up fine.

i'll have to give it the ole tap test.