bummer brah.

[xspiderfingersx]

First catastrophic failure of the rm100. Tubes were blue at rehearsal last night, and i had a show at 7 today. Brought it to Sam Ash(last resort) To simply retube it today thinking it was just tubes dying and it was biased overly hot.

The light had come on for the first tube about two weeks ago, and upon reading up on the way the system works I had let it go for a bit until i was ready to retube the whole head; turns out some kind of wiring got itself lose and melted to the tolex inside the head and a cap that shouldve been getting a -43 was in fact getting a +220 charge. Blew that tube, and the adjoining one on the flank. 220 bucks later, I have my head back. Seems like there was nothing i could have done to cause the damage. Its been like that for a while according to the guy, and was running at fifty watts for that time frame because the outter tubes were blown: it sounded so great for those few weeks too!

I was very disappointed with the sound at the show tonight, its not getting as hot anymore. I think im gonna get the 1086 because the xtc isnt gainy or chuggy enough with all 100 watts behind it. Can the 1086 get really good midrange cut and grind? Like i need a lot more balls then my xtc is giving me.

So i called randall. As I expected i was SOL..."you brought it to an unauthorized repair man...blah blah blah five year warrenty is good if youre a bedroom guitarist with a month to wait for your fucking head." I contacted both 'authorized repair' shops in my area...neither of them have ever even touched a randall.

This whole experience makes me regret the money ive spent on this head and all of the good things i've said about it. Mesa Boogie would walk me through everything, talk the whole thing out, and at least had a repairman with in an hours drive thats heard of that brand of amp.

If the 1086 doesnt sound insanely good im throwing this thing on the bay and getting an engl or framus.

 

[guitarguy510]

Bah that sucks man, Randall customer support strikes again it seems! :? I feel for you dude, most of the "licensed" repair techs for these companies have NEVER touched the gear. I once had a Line 6 Spider II about 2 years ago and it broke LITERALLY 2 days after the 30 day mark of ownership. Line 6 was cool about it and said I could get it fixed for free, but I had to take it to one of their repair guys. Well the closest one was a TINY place (when I say tiny I mean literally it looked like someone's basement!) out in Hazelton I believe, which is a good 2-3 hours from my house, way up in the mountains. I called and called to find out the status and the only thing the dude would tell me is "HEY! Take it easy, I've never looked at these before! It's going to be at least another week...." Hmmmm..... why do companies hire repair techs that have never looked at their gear? They SHOULD have all the techs fly out to their HQ and look at the gear in person, maybe even give them a quick troubleshooting class and explain what COULD go wrong and how to fix it QUICKLY! :roll: Long story short, I got my amp back.... a MONTH later. Fortunately for me I wasn't gigging but I can totally appreciate the situation, if I had a gig that week I would have been SOL and REALLY pissed if they told me I had to take it to some repair guy out in the middle of nowhere to get it looked at! I mean c'mon, I live near Philly, that's a MAJOR city, why would they put an authorized repair center out in the boondocks? :evil: I hope your amp behaves for you from now on man.

As for the 1086, yes it cuts very well and the mids are quite pronounced. I used it in my RM100 (running with all 4 tubes, so it was @ 100 watts) before I sold it and it sounded fantastic. I used it for a lot of palm muted chugga-chugga music like Killswitch Engage etc. and it sounded great. Hope that helps man!

 

[johnmfer]

That's definitely a bummer... if you liked the tone you got with 50 watts, have you thought about either pulling the outer tubes, or maybe running 6v6 tubes instead?

 

[goldwing68nv]

...if you're playing Florida-style death metal stuff,the 1086 wont do it,either.get yourself an Engl Fireball & you've got a "crusher" with bulletproof Engl amp-build quality & proven reliability...

 

[Chad]

...if you're playing Florida-style death metal stuff,the 1086 wont do it,either.get yourself an Engl Fireball & you've got a "crusher" with bulletproof Engl amp-build quality & proven reliability...

I've never owned an Engl, but I've heard their design makes them extremely difficult/expensive to work on.

 

[goldwing68nv]

the reliability of an Engl is very,very good.i spoke to a local amp repair tech/guru down in Chicago about a few months ago about Engl amps & the Fireball-model specifically and he mentioned that they never really came in often for repairs other than replacing tubes/biasing or customers damaging their head due to dropping something on them or knocking one onto the floor.he really held a high regard about them and mentioned that he can service them without any problems.the only thing i've ever heard that people have complained about is the fact that all the front panel control pots are mounted on a single circuit board,so it's a litlle more complicated to replace one than simply popping out a single pot,as is the case on most other amps...check out harmony-central.com reviews and see how people rate these amps quality-wise...Engl's are just my suggestion for a certain tone & style of playing.

 

[guitarguy510]

My buddy plays professionally (like in front of 20,000+ people!) and also serves as an amp tech when he is back home and he's told me this about Engl amps: they sound AWESOME but YES when they break down forget about finding a part or repairing them in the US. I was looking to buy an ENGL a while back and just listening to him explain a repair he had to do on a guy's ENGL made me cringe. Note that I don't have one today, even though I could have gone that direction. They DO sound killer, but if that day ever comes where it breaks down....

 

[xspiderfingersx]

the xtc gets the sound pretty close, i just want a little more chunk and a little less fuzz. The xtc kills my other guitarists triple rec in both departments, but im a tone snob.

Now heres my situation update/bump for anyone who cares:

I noticed the tubes werent seated properly(the tech did the whole job in less then 4 hours for me so ill let it slide haha) and i reseated them and it sounded like its old self again if not a little better.

Ive gotten past my rage period where i've wanted to hock it and im starting to love it once again, but our relationship is deeply damaged right now. From the clips ive heard the 1086 will probably fit my needs nicely.

Im modding my amp to look kinda like the framus(putting a row of ultrabrite led's in the top of the head so the whole thing glows. Probably green because i've never seen an amp with that...h&k has the blue and purples, framus and engls are red...should be cool

 

[guitarguy510]

Spider did you get my PM sir?

 

[xspiderfingersx]

negative captain.

 

[guitarguy510]

Oh, I sent you a PM on here, it should say up top that you have 1 new message? Either way, I was just letting you know that I'm selling my 1086 because I'm having Bruce make me a dual channel Egnater 1086 module! Let me know if you're interested! If I don't hear from anyone by tomorrow afternoon I'm listing that baby on eBay ASAP!

 

[xspiderfingersx]

if you're looking to put in an order and are in a hurry i suggest ebay but if youre interested in waiting a little im down

 

[RD/MAN]

Hey Spider,

This is Doug from Randall. I'm sorry to hear about your negative experience with our customer support or apparent lack of. Do you still have the receipt from the repair techinician?? If so, please fax it to the number below and I will see if we can refund some of the costs. Unfortunately we can't cover the tube costs, but we can pay you back for the tech work.

Also, let me know if you have any more trouble and we will take care of it directly for you.

Fax: (800) 877-8444 (Put to my attention Doug@Randall)

Thanks!

 

[Tube Head]

+1 for Randall support!!

 

[Chad]

Enjoyed reading this thread and glad to see that RD/Man has posted on this forum. But the remaining question....

What is a "bummer brah"?

 

[Ziggy!!]

I dunno about the original posters intentions, but "brah" is a colloquial progression from "brother" and "bro" and "bruz" etc in New Zealand.


Posts like this kinda make me comfortable choosing Egnater over Randall.

 

[xspiderfingersx]

haha check out the movie point break.

 

[rickgk]

I would have to agree that randall quality control is sub standard, i have had so many varying problems with the randall MTS series that i am contemplating selling and going with another brand.

Firstly i bought the RM4 - RT250 combo, the poweramp crapped out in the middle of gigs twice (huge volume dips and spikes), i had to send it to another state for repair but got it back and had the same problem, so i traded for an RM100 head, which i then had a problem with the blackface module popping and had to replace preamp tubes (didn't do this under warranty because it would have taken too long to get the module back).
I bought the RM20 combo for smaller gigs and as soon as i got that the powertubes blew after 10 mins playing time (once again i just replaced the valves at my own expense as i needed to gig the amp that night) it turns out that the bias was set WAY too high from the factory.
Then i got my lynch cab that had the wrong speakers installed.

All in all there are just TOO many quality control issues with the randall equipment. And not enough support in response to the issues people are having.

I absolutely love the concept but randall need to get it together.
I think i am going to try selling all my MTS gear off and moving up to the Egnater equivalent.