Marshall valvestate vs100 volume trouble

bandmaster188

hi folks, taking a look at a friends amp which he's told me has been having a volume issue.
he gigged it the other night and said on his usual setting on the clean channel, the volume seemed quieter than normal initially but then started increasing to a point where it was way too loud and started sounding distorted.
i've had it running a couple of times today with no such issues. Has anyone come across anything like this with these amps?
cheers!

ICBM

Check the headphone jack first. They often make a bad contact in the switch which disconnects the speakers - which is completely unnecessary since you can pull the speaker plug out to turn it off, so I always bridge the headphone jack contacts to disable the switch.

If the jack switch was making a bad contact the amp would have sounded quiet, so he may have turned it up further, then if the contact started to work better it would have got much louder and may have sounded distorted.

There are other possibilities but that’s where I would start...

bandmaster188

ICBM said:

Check the headphone jack first. They often make a bad contact in the switch which disconnects the speakers - which is completely unnecessary since you can pull the speaker plug out to turn it off, so I always bridge the headphone jack contacts to disable the switch.

If the jack switch was making a bad contact the amp would have sounded quiet, so he may have turned it up further, then if the contact started to work better it would have got much louder and may have sounded distorted.

There are other possibilities but that’s where I would start...

Thanks ICBM, will take a look at that. I've just been playing with again and all seems fine except for one of the spade terminals on the speaker which was quite loose and cut the speaker in and out when wiggled. I've just soldered these in place.

ICBM

bandmaster188 said:

Thanks ICBM, will take a look at that. I've just been playing with again and all seems fine except for one of the spade terminals on the speaker which was quite loose and cut the speaker in and out when wiggled. I've just soldered these in place.

That’s a definite possibility too. I also always cut off the crimps and solder the wires directly to the speaker, for that reason.