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Author Topic: Mesa 290 rage  (Read 3362 times)

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Batsinthebelltower

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Mesa 290 rage
« on: Time Format »

So ive been playing a mesa 290 for about 7 years now . I got my student loan back in the day and ordered a 2:90 from ebay usa to ireland , over £100 delivery , but hey , its the business !

A while back i read you can run half el34s in certain models , so mailed mesa my serial number etc for absolute verification, they replied saying which tube sockets to use. Even though i followed it specifically i got the feeling this is where problems begun

After that i went back to all 6L6 and started experiencing volume swells , total dropout of audio during recording sessions , and generally unpredictable operation. I retubed the entire thing , a local store made me a great deal of £200 for the retube , instead of the retail £300. Unfortunately not much changed it was still inconsistent ....

Eventually it gave off a burning smell one night , and i found the plastic block connector melted inside ; An apparently common error in the 290 , SO i performed the "solder to board" mod , and managed to get it running again , however only Side B was working ! Side A is totally silent ; i tried switching each sides tubes , A still silent, B still fine.

Now Side B is working for about 20minutes then goes totally silent. Im left in the position of possibly replacing side A transformer , £300ish , plus £90 shipping each way to mesaUK (£180) . I also have a 10kilo usa to uk power block that has to be shipped with it , no doubt adding more costs. Mesa said they would look at it but highly recommend a full MESA brand retube (as they would) ; and mesa tubes are literally double the cost of JJs....  So im at the point where its around £600-£700 to repair , all in .  :facepalm:  Not sure what to do with it ; I certainly dont trust the courier to deliver it with 8 power tubes intact. It arrived from usa with 5 smashed. Currently im just running the 3TM/Gmaj straight into cab for bedroom levels , and into the ADA monstercab to record .... The 290 is currently packed away , so damn expensive just to get playing guitar again !  :facepalm:
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MarshallJMP

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Re: Mesa 290 rage
« Reply #1 on: Time Format »

Well those idc connectors are no good for running high currents like filaments.And i saw some pics on the net with burned connectors.Now there are better connector with trifurcon pins that are a lot better but more expensive to buy and build.
Now it could be the problem started with the EL34 tubes since they draw a lot mor filament current (1.5A vs 0.9A fom a 6L6) and this could have caused the burned connector and all the stuff the happend due to this problem.This is actually a design error but mesa will never admit to that since they will have to pay for all the repairs.

Seems it has a lot of problems,and i think it can be fixed,problem is at what cost.If i see the amounts mesa asks i wonder if it would be worth the investment.Like 300 pound for an output transformer!!!!! that's insane :crazy:

You're sure you did the soldering correct?No cold joint or wires twisted?
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rnolan

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Re: Mesa 290 rage
« Reply #2 on: Time Format »

Wow what a pain.. for that sort of repair money you can but a nice new something else that's your voltage (e.g. Carvin TS100 (you can order 6L6 or EL34 variants and also interchange them later, there's a switch internally for each output stage to select)).  Boogie are bad with tubes. they charge double (as you say) for the same thing you can buy from a reputable online tube store (e.g. Dougs Tubes) who do the same testing boogie do. They seem to have their customers snow jobbed... And BTW, I've bought a few Boogie SPAX7 (their flag ship tube) and some have been duds (so much for the expensive rigorous testing).
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