I committed a few off days as they're easy to come by right now, to fixing this problem.
so here's the story:
RE: Line 6 Spider Jam(pawned by original owner, broken, used, unloved)
I bought an amp, beautiful non working, Line 6 as part of a package deal at a local pawn shop...
"the amp has been here for 2 years, and you will not be able to return it, do you understand?" yes sir, for the price of the amp, and the smile on their faces we were both winning, regardless of the outcome.
I knew the amp didn't work. no sound, no lights, "dead" amp.
immediately stripped it down, before turning it on.
flashlights and daylight, wooden and plastic probing tools ready.
...I could see nothing, NOTHING at all wrong! I'm sure you can imagine what I expected to see but it was, upon first inspection, pristine condition "suckers!!!" of course that went thru my head, followed by, "wait, it's been there two years, this isn't going to be this easy".
end of story time, down to the stuff n junk.
looked for safety issues to prevent me from plugging it in.
plugged it in.
your basic millisecond "chkkk" from ON/OFF.
went in deeper, looking for a history, either of abuse, or repair, nothing visible, all witness paint where it's expected and perfect...hmm. seriously wtf.
started tracing leads, beginning with the obvious "chek duh fooz"
[[[[[[[ rawr fml...I'm really sorry for the sticking to story mode, but it's how I write, and if I try to stop, it just get more and more strange, due to drifting in and out, so...I'm just shooting it out there]]]]]]
I'm going to condense it in bold for your sake.
found worn, loose connector, and signs of ill repair to black wire at plug, removed connecting part, soldered it.
noticed cross threaded Aux plastic keeper "bolt", signs of bad things to come...always.
fk, I was right...residual fluid, now crusty in 4 square in area, cleaned and beautifiled(my word, don't steal it!)
used a powerful led flashlight to shine thru pcb's, looking at traces, fun way to find weird issues. found one!
cold solder on the corner of the guitar input metal box, the corner that's used as a ground(?) maybe?
btw, I am NOT an amp tech obviously, just a dude that loves fixing my own stuff,,,well I got my A+ to build clone PC's...ok getting off track...
fixed, cleaned, soldered, beautifiled.
still no go...
several hours of being pissed and calling myself stupid went by.
I decided to go balls deep and see if it fixed my new fetish.
traced everything, EVERYTHING!!!! took pictures of every screw bolt, nut and before and afters(mostly).
decided to go for the obvious, the power board, or the PCB with the twin towers of doom(capacitors, I hate em all)last bolt i removed was cross threaded, I smell success!
once again, this bolt was the most important bolt in the area, it supplied the ground PCB lead, and was about 1/8th inch away from being fully tightened, guess he gave up.
cleaned, filed threads, put it back together...NOOOTTTHHHIn...wait...did I...I just saw the orange light on the front come on! hell yeah baby, we're going to win, we jusy don't knwo how yet.
use my plastic probes to get my freak on with alien like feels...I touched stuff to see what happened, lol.
A LOT HAPPENED.
in fact everything happened. it came to life, and it worked...for 30 seconds, then died.
I repeated this until I zeroed in on the lil' bastard that put this sexy thing on a shelf unloved and ignored for years...
sorry, doing it again...damn.
I "feel torqued" all the bolts evenly, guessing an appropriate force relying on experience, maybe 5lbs if that, and slightly more for the ground bolt.
ok, near the large capacitors there are 2 sections of 4 beige 1/4 inch...ish...I believe they're "resistors" (sorry, everything's buttoned up for now, soooo I'm going by memory)
incredibly unnecessarily long story, shor...one(or more, but definitely one) of these are bad, and slightly nudged brings the amp back to life, intermittently. I can't afford the replacement board yet, but I'm certain this will fix the issue...the one I had, and hopefully some of yours.
the end, for now.
Thanks for reading, scanning, ignoring , and/or scrolling through,
jason passmore
