God damn Vox Pathfinder 15r

Cirrus

You were good. You were useable at home, took pedals well. You were lightweight, easy to carry. You sounded great plugged into a 2x12 - like "could use for a gig in a pinch" great.

Then all your smoke came out for no good reason, and now you're nothing. :-<

ICBM

Probably a blown output IC. From memory it's a TDA2030, which is well under a fiver.

If you want to make it more robust I'm pretty sure you can directly replace it with a TDA2050, which is a heavier-duty version of the same.

ThePrettyDamned

They do sound pretty decent, don't they?  

Worth getting it fixed, it it's a simple and cheap one, for sure.

Branshen

Especially since they are harder to come by since they discontinued this amp.

Cirrus

I only got it in June. Looked out the receipt, will see if I can get guitar guitar to deal with it. Thanks for the chip tip @ICBM!

thermionic

I think there's a well-documented mod that involves replacing the power amp chip to take it up to 22W?

ICBM

thermionic said:

I think there's a well-documented mod that involves replacing the power amp chip to take it up to 22W?

I haven't seen that, but using a TDA2050 might, if the power supply voltages are enough. The 2050 is capable of up to 35W output with maximum voltages (+/-22V supply) - the 2030 is only 14W (+/-18V supply), so even if the 2050 increases the maximum power output a bit it will still be running much more conservatively relative to its spec and should therefore be more reliable - whereas the 2030 is running at its limit. I certainly can't see any reason it shouldn't be directly compatible either.