Amplifi 75 constantly resetting

[gildorluthien]

Was given my Amplifi 75 last summer.  Has worked great up until about a month ago.  I use it as an amp (naturally) but also used the bluetooth as well as the aux input (makes a great speaker for computer).  One of the things I enjoy is using it for Rocksmith on my PC.  Started noticing that while I was playing the sound would completely cut out for about 5 seconds every few minutes.  When I looked down, all the lights were flashing like it was in a power cycle. 

 

Searches online have proved pretty fruitless, I did find one guy who had a Spider that was having sort of the same symptoms as me, and his was due to over heating.  So maybe that's it.

 

Anyone else have this issue?  Are there any schematics out there?  Anyone tear their Amplifi apart and get things going themselves?  It's obviously out of warranty, and I don't have the $$ to pay for repair, especially if it's something really bad.  I used the amp one evening recently and had no problems, but then the next day it was cycling every couple of minutes.

 

Frustrated.

[Thelmarodriguez]

I am having a same problem. What to do?

[Pascalkb37]

I have a similar problem or possibly a more serious one.  My amp has intermittent resets every 30 seconds and is unusable for quite a while already.  When resetting the amp restarts and turn on set to the first default tone stored in memory. 

 

The issue started soon after my warranty expired.  At the time when I called support, I was told that all the cost would have to be assumed by me and could likely require the expensive replacement of my main board which made no sense at all.  
 

I never had any issue with similar gears.  I don’t gig.  Just wanted to have an amp for casual playing with my guitar and being able to stream music to play along. 

 

I ended up storing the amp and possibly to address in a future time.  This was a few years back.  I purchased my AMPLIFi75 late 2016/early 2017. 

 

Two weeks ago, Oct 2022, I decided to check the amp again.

 

Oddly enough this time I was able to play without interruptions. I did not make any change to the amp, no firmware updates. , no iOS app update.  Just plugged my guitar into the amp as standalone and played navigating between the 4 tones stored in memory. 

However, all ended as soon as I decided to connect via Bluetooth and utilize the AMPLIFi iOS app from my phone.  By that time I was already playing 10-15 minutes without interruptions. 
 

I have not add a chance to continue testing but I suspect that my amp intermittent resets might be caused by a Bluetooth connectivity or an amplifi iOS app issue(s).  My plan is to retest the amp without using anything but my guitar plugged to the amp directly and play only any of the 4 in memory stored presets. 
 

This is how I am going to retest:

1. Uninstall the AMPLIFi iOS app

2. Forget the Bluetooth AMPLIFi device from my phone 

3. Make sure my AMPLIFi 75 has nothing connected to it.  Not even a USB cable

4. Plug my guitar direct connection to the amp. 

5. While playing, utilize only the 4 tone in memory and without touching or attempting to connect via Bluetooth

 

Might not resolve the underlying issue(s) and of course would be suboptimal but at least I might be able to get some sound from this amp.  We’ll see.  Maybe someone can give it a try too? 
 

UPDATE: 

Ended up beginning the re-test.  So far so good.  No intermittent reset so far. 

Edited November 5, 2022 by Pascalkb37
Updated with comment about testing and a pic.

[Elenaclark]

Thanks for sharing that information.  MyCCPay

[roryburns]

I have similar problem can anyone have solution?   TigerIsHome

[Annenelson]

Try once to fix this error. Launch the AmpliFi app. Tap the icon of the AmpliFi router. Tap General. Scroll down to the bottom of the screen and tap Factory Reset. May be this will work well for you.  My Health Online Sutter

[gildorluthien]

So I'm finally following up my original post just for the sake of closing it out.  I had set the amp aside myself because I got frustrated with the resetting and nothing seemed to work.  I've reflashed the firmware more times than I can count - I even bought a new SD card - someone on another post was able to clone the contents of an SD from a working Amplifi 75 using the 2.60 firmware, and shared the image, so I put that on a new SD card and swapped it out.  At first, it seemed to work, I wasn't getting the lockups that the amp had sprialed into from the resetting, but it quickly degraded again.  I have found all kinds of posts about there being issues with the motherboards being flaky, the bluetooth itself being shoddy, and one guy knew a dude good with electronics repair and he found a faulty capacitor or connector and replaced it.

 

I've tried everything in every post.  I've went into recovery mode and flashed different versions of the firmware.  I've factory reset it over and over and over and over.  I've tried different power cords, different outlets.  I've used the Bluetooth, not used the Bluetooth.  I've left the back panel unscrewed thinking that it was a heat issue.  The amp just exists in a cycle of resetting now.

 

All I know is that at this point, the amp is useless.  It worked really well for me for about a year and handful of months, but then it just completely fell apart.  It was given to me by a friend because I didn't have anything, and I really wanted to make it work, but I think the money that it would cost to either send back to Yamaha/Line6 or even find someone local to repair it I could spend on a new amp that would work 10 times better (and longer).  It's out of warranty, and the bothersome thing is that as far back as I can in the life of this amp, for some reason, Line6 has been less than helpful to the community of musicians who gave them money for these amps.  The only replies I've seen and heard of (particularly when they were still making it and it was under warranty for most people) were "Do a factory reset.  Get another USB cord.  Oh well, you'll have to send it to us at your cost and pay us to fix it."

 

I think at this point...I'm just done with it.  I'm out 5 bucks for the SD card, so it's not a loss money wise - but it's just frustrating that the Amplifi series has in the end proven to be an overhyped, shoddily built product from Line 6.

[SilverBoss]

I have the same situation with my Amplifi 150 amp unfortunately. At intervals the amplifier goes into firmware update mode, when all four LEDs blink. The last time I reflashed the MicroSD card with firmware version 2.60, the amplifier worked for about three weeks and then suddenly turned into a pumpkin again. This is unpredictable behavior. Maybe the flash drive is randomly writing garbage code during operation, or the bluetooth connection is affecting the operation, or some components on the motherboard are unstable. But during these few weeks I have not noticed any problems with sound or tone quality. 

I'm using a USB connection, outputting sound from the computer to an Amplifi 150 amplifier. I use both macOSX Mohave and Windows 11x64. The only thing is I don't change the built in presets or save them to the amp. I save all newly created guitar tones to my Android phone in the My Tones category. 

I'm going to try reflashing the firmware again this weekend and see how long it lasts without another crash. I use 4 or 8 gigabyte cards.

[SilverBoss]

Over the weekend I tried to re-flash the amp again using a 4GB disk image, and this is what I ended up with.

 

1. The micro SD card is not always read and started on the amplifier. Sometimes I had to use different disks, 4GB and 8GB, reflashing several times. I think the problem is not in the computer and not in the cards, because I use high-quality cards SanDisk, Kingston, and recording bit to bit. Flashed in Windows 11 and MacOS Mohave, on a desktop computer and laptop, all equipment is fully operational.
2. On the third or fourth attempt to rewrite the card, the amp reads the card and starts up. 
3. I didn't touch anything, didn't run bluetooth, didn't change or edit the built-in presets. Just used it as a monitor speaker for my computer via USB, and connected my guitar directly. In this mode the amplifier worked for half a day and switched to the mode when all four LEDs start blinking.
4. Attempts to make a factory reset by pressing the tone and volume buttons of the amplifier lead to nothing.
5. Attempting to reflash the amplifier via the USB connection also does not help. After a complete re-flashing of the amplifier after turning on the amplifier again goes into the mode of blinking four LEDs, factory reset does not help.
6. Apparently, I will have to disassemble the amplifier again, pull out the microSD card and reflash it again.

 

I conclude that this is due to some kind of software malfunction, i.e. the amplifier somehow corrupts the firmware and turns into a brick.

Please share your thoughts, everyone who tried to reanimate the amplifier on their own, maybe there is a poor quality part on the motherboard that spoils everything, or some glitch, but what is it? 

 

If someone has an amp that doesn't have these problems and has been running stable for a very long time, please take a firmware image from your Amplifi 150 MicroSD card and post it in the cloud. You will help a lot of people and make a lot of people with amplifier problems happy!