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No Sound From My Vetta Ii Combo. Where To Start?


kylejt
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It's been a bit flaky from my initial purchase. The seller said it might need a common repair down the road, but I was so giddy at getting it, a long board, plus a 2x12 extension cab for $400, my eyes were glazed over.

 

So, the display looks normal, but no sound from the speaker, nor headphones. I get the initial, normal POP with firing it up. Where should I start? (Yeah, I already swapped out guitars and input cords).

 

Kyle

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so you get a pop when energizing. i would think  the output section is working. is there any noise at all after you turn it on? but with no test equipment and no schematics how can you troubleshoot? i would inject a signal at the input and follow the signal path until it stops but for that you need a sig gen and a spectrum analyzer. otherwise i'm stumped. 

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The battery is there to keep the static RAM chip from dumping it's contents. Folks use flash memory for that sort of thing now but yes the back up battery being dead can make all sorts of things do crazy stuff so it's good practice to start there since they are so cheap to change.  

After installing a new battery, I'd probably reload the software just to be sure you get a good clean start up.

I assume you've tried several patches and have disconnected the long board to simplify things.

 

BTW you don't really need a spectrum analyzer to signal trace the amp but a common oscilloscope would sure go a long way towards troubleshooting both the digital and analog stuff. Then again you'd have to be familar with this sort of thing, if not I'm sure you can find a friend who is.

 

BTW The service manual can be downloaded from the Internet at http://elektrotanya.com/line-6_vetta-hd_sm.pdf/download.html  Ever who digs into it will need it. It's for the head amp but the head and the combo amps are almost identical in large part. Enough to nail your problem anyway.

 

 

Is there a common Achillies heel on these amps? Something that routinely fails?

 

Edit: After reading a few comments, I recall the seller telling me the battery might be suspect. Would that cause the output isssue?

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Well, flashing the memory did the trick. Now it's on to making the long board work. All I get is a quick blink of the LEDs above the pedals, and then nada.

Just so you know if you didn't already, the long board has to be turned on and saved in the on state in each and every patch that you intend to use it in. Just hit the toe switch in each patch that you want the board enabled in then save the patch in that state. It will also save any custom mapping of the expression pedals that you've done. By default the expression pedals are wah and volume.

The default is no board in each and every factory patch and until you turn it on it don't know nuttin until you tell it it's there with it plugged in and then turned on. Yeah I know, it's a PITA but it is what it is.     

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I tried several cables, so that's not it.

 

lollipop, you said the board has to be "turned on". I'm new to the Vetta world, so I'm not sure what that means. Is there something on the Vetta I need to configure to get the FBV to go hot? Right now, aside from the initial LED blink, it's dead, with no display.

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Amp went flakey again. No sound output. Front panel looks good. An interesting symptom: when using the Tuner, it won't report the E and A, but will the rest.

 

Took the rig to the local Line repair place, and they told me it's the second one in their shop with the same problem, and Line 6 wants them to ship to them. Interesting.

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Either E? It sure sounds like it almost has to be a digital problem of some kind. Did you get the long board working? How's the tuner display on it?

 

 

 

Took the rig to the local Line repair place, and they told me it's the second one in their shop with the same problem, and Line 6 wants them to ship to them. Interesting.

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Nope, just low E and A aren't getting through on the tuner.

 

The longboard is DOA. I opened it up, and the all the ribbon cables were disconnected. Someone cooked it, tried to fix it, and it didn't work. It's a gonner. My repair shop will take it, and the case, and give me a nice credit toward the repair. Luckily, I only paid about $30 bucks for it, and took a chance. In the end, I still made out, but will look for another down the road.

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Nope, just low E and A aren't getting through on the tuner.

 

The longboard is DOA. I opened it up, and the all the ribbon cables were disconnected. Someone cooked it, tried to fix it, and it didn't work. It's a gonner. My repair shop will take it, and the case, and give me a nice credit toward the repair. Luckily, I only paid about $30 bucks for it, and took a chance. In the end, I still made out, but will look for another down the road.

That's too bad. The long board is a great addition to the Vetta. It's a well built piece too.

I found a used one at Guitar Center for not much and lucky for me it worked just fine. I've adapeted mine with a couple of bits of wood so it fits and parks right into the back opening of my Vetta combo for transport and storage.

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  • 3 months later...

MY vetta 2 was working fine but now I have no output from the speakers at all....there is a 'pop' when i start it up and i can tune the guitar via the tuner I've had a look inside the longboard and it all looks connected I've also gone through the output and that is all on speaker too........it's obviously getting the signal from the guitar but nada from the speakers.........and yes i've checked those too......any ideas?

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MY vetta 2 was working fine but now I have no output from the speakers at all....there is a 'pop' when i start it up and i can tune the guitar via the tuner I've had a look inside the longboard and it all looks connected I've also gone through the output and that is all on speaker too........it's obviously getting the signal from the guitar but nada from the speakers.........and yes i've checked those too......any ideas?

Can you hear anything with a set of headphones plugged in?

 

Careful with headphones plugged in the speakers are automatically muted so there could be something amiss in that circuit. It gets the power amp mute signal via a mechanical connection in the head phone jack so if that has gone flakey then the speakers will be muted. 

 

It's somewhere to start anyway.

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Hiya DickFoster.....yeah the headphones output works fine......the amp was also working when i used the output on the back straight into the pa....so i'm thinking that if it was muted then that would also apply to that circuit too...but thanks for that

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Hiya DickFoster.....yeah the headphones output works fine......the amp was also working when i used the output on the back straight into the pa....so i'm thinking that if it was muted then that would also apply to that circuit too...but thanks for that

Actually no. The only thing that mutes with the heaphones plugged in is the preamp to the power amp that drives the speakers. All the other outputs headphone output, effects out and direct out will still function with the headphones plugged in. That tells us that your problem is likely either with the preamp, power amp or one of the supply voltages dedicated soley to one of those circuits.

 

At least that piece of info eliminates a whole bunch of stuff in the front end of the amp, the DSPs, processor, etc. etc. etc.

 

It's all about finding out what works and what doesn't so you know where to start looking for the problem. In electronics they call this the half split method of troubleshooting. You start in the middle of the overall circuit to find out if the first or second half is good or bad then cut the known bad half into half again etc. until you eventually get the problem isolated down to your problem component.

 

Now that you know that the front half is good, ever who works on it need only look at the back half to find your problem.

 

The fact that it's a stereo amp and both channels are not working should make it just that much easier to find the trouble. Armed with a schematic and common test gear like a DVM and scope ever who your tech is should have little trouble finding your problem and getting it put right again.  

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it's official.........it was the power amp module which burnt out..............I originally bought the amp from GAK in Brighton as 'B' stock and was assured by the salesman(line 6 retailer) that it was brand new and simply did not have the packaging with it,apparently the person who bought it did not like the 'pop' sound when it was turned on,I was told that it was perfectly 'normal'......stupidly I believed him.....now after 2x150 mile round trips (away touring at the weekend so time was a factor) and £157 lighter the amp no longer 'pops' when turned on.......I was informed by a member of their staff at Rugby that I was just 'unlucky' and that there is a bad one in every batch,in saying that I can't praise the guys in the workshop highly enough.....so to summarise.....dodgy amp leaves factory,dodgy amp gets returned to retailer who passes it off as 'perfect' and end user stumps up cash to have it fixed........happy? not really, but I guess that I don't have to go out and hire an amp and some pedals for the tour......thanks for your input though DickFoster

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I'm glad you got it sorted out. Vetta's are good amps with a solid design.

 

Did they change the whole board or just the bad component parts? As complete boards are getting ever tougher to find, it's making component level repair the only option as time goes forward.

 

If you know could you share what the defective components were?  

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  • 4 months later...

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