luisrico

Thanks for your advice guys, it's very helpful.

Hi there, My DT50 recently broke down. Now, I purchased it in the US but I don't live there, so I took the amp to my local technician, since there is no line6 service center here in my country. He explained to me that it has a blown power transformer. Apparently, he's been unsuccesful at obtaining a new transformer through the official line6 distributors in my country. Therefore, he's offered me to rewind the transformer, and guarantees the job, as he's been in this business for 30+ years. Now, I went to see if I could order the transformer online, and the only shop I can get it from is fullcompass dot com, but I do not know whether this transformer is line6 approved or not. What do you recommend? I trust the guy with "regular" transformers, but I know the DT50 is a beast of its own because of the way it analogically changes how the tubes work, so I'm not sure if he'll be up for the job at the end of the day. I'm also unsure about buying the transformer online because I don't know if that is an approved part, or even if it is, these line6 transformers are said to be poorly manufactured, so it could fail again. On top of that, I still have to check if my amp was one of those addressed by Bulletin 059, which in that case, there might be additional repairments needed so the amp doesn't blow antoher transformer. I'm really clueless about what my best option is. I hope somebody here can give me some good advice on how to proceed. Shipping the amp to the US for servicing is not viable, it would be too expensive and I also don't have a receipt for the purchase (bought it on ebay, second hand), which I understand I need in order to be able to send it to a repair center. Thanks in advance.

Hi Kenmac1, you're definitely not alone, I'm basically experiencing the same issue here ! It's really frustrating because I had an old pod XT live before and I was happy with it, until the switches stopped working, after years of heavy usage, so I decided to buy an HD500X because it seemed like it had such heavy-duty switches. Unfortunately, I was wrong. My HD500X unit also reverses to a particular patch when operating any of the lower row switches. I opened the unit and found out the issue. One of the tactile switches is worn out and loose, so it gets activated when other switches in the same PC board are pressed down, because the vibrations get transmitted and the faulty switch is very loose so it shorts too easily with any vibration. I corrobotated this by gently hitting my POD on the sides and the faulty switch would switch on and off accordingly. I figured that if I turn the unit upside down, the loose switch wouldn't make contact and everything should work normal, and it did, but I can't obviously have the unit turned upside down during a gig ! I'm replacing the tactile switch myself since I'm not covered by guarantee anymore. Try putting your unit upside down and see if you still experience the issue (I know, it's going to be tricky to try out), if you don't, then more likely than not, you have a tactile switch totally worn out. Peace.