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Comments
It's actually a really stupid flaw - the EL84 is a well-designed valve which purposely has the high-voltage pins on one side of the base, separated from each other and from the low-voltage pins by spaces to prevent arcing. So what did Fender do? Ran one of the low-voltage traces straight between the high-voltage pins! Totally defeating the point of the valve design...
For anyone unfamiliar with this, this is how it starts - or sometimes between the lower right pin and the trace parallel to it roughly where there is a tiny black spot on the edge of the trace:
And this is how it ends:
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
Not that it fixes the underlying issue as you pointed out.
A friend has a Mk IV Blues Junior with Jensen, and it does sound glorious. I wouldn't want to risk something like this happening though. Neither of my gigging guitar amps use PCBs, they are built on turret board and/or tag board.
Conversely, this is a fire that happened in a Fender Custom Shop Twin-o-Lux... which is a tag-board amp. (After removing the burned wiring loom from the socket.)
The common factor is poor design - in this case not fitting the amp with an HT fuse, which is also a fault in the Blues Junior. That one step would have prevented this completely.
That isn't to say Fenders are unusually poorly-designed either - in fact I would put them slightly above average for a mass-production company.
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
I got mine second hand so I don't know how well broken in the speaker was. I'm not sure the original owner used it a lot at high volume, but I didn't change it out right away. Based on my experience I definitely prefer the WGS.