RM100 RM4 ... reliability

Hi guys,

I had an RM100M and really loved the sound of it but had a lot of trouble with it since the beginning and so sold it and now am interested to buy another one or the rack or George Lynch version in the hope that this one will work as intended.

The issues where mostly related to blown fuses (wrong fuses in the power section) and an issue that power amp section stopped working (power tubes stopped working due to a fuse inside that blew, but as these are hard to access you have to open the amp to change them). I was told that this was because I didn't wait enough time to warm up the amp before turning on the standby switch (same for turning down the amp), but that's not the case, I always take care of that and wait ~1 minute before I activate the standby switch.

So my question is, are the MTS amps reliable ? Is the rack or George Lynch version better quality then the standard RM100 .... Any good advice to check the connections inside the amp or other things to avoid failure on the road ?

I really love the sound of this amp (and I have tested a lot of amps so far) so I'd hate to change, but I need an amp that's reliable for my gigs.

thanks so much for the input,

Torento

Well, I havent had that fuse blow before but in answer to both your posts, I've had the tube fuses blow ie. the fast blow ones many times aswell as the power fuse. This was due to my dealer, they were garbage they 1st informed me that my RM100 was self biasing..... then when I had it in the store they pulled out a power tube and forced it back in the wrong way, then replaced it with a cheap el34 when the other 3 were JJ e34l's and refused to give me a tube that matched the rest....... then once that happened the amps power fuse blew and they replaced it with the wrong one. I ended up having to buy my own power fuses, tube fuses and 4 new power tubes. Since I bought the amp from there in feb, I havent gone back to the store and wont ever again. All this happened within the 1st week of buying the amp and they refused to refund me and argued with me over the phone, I contacted the head of CMI who are the Australian Randall retailers, the dealer didnt expect that I was lucky to have a family memeber whos a partner with CMI and they helped me sort it out. I did however have to pay for new fuses and replace a tube within 5 days of purchasing.

Since I replaced and fixed the problems myself rather then relying on the dealer the amp has worked flawless for the last 3 months. I wouldnt trade this amp for any other, altho all that sh#t happened the tone is worth it.

I know what you're saying about the reliability issues. I don't think the Lynch Box is much different, though. Khingpin (Craig) on here just blew the fuse on his LB when he got his new modules last week.
I have no problem with my RM100 so far, (knock on wood), except that it came with a bad tube. And I do gig regularly.
From what I've learned about these amps (I run an RM50 combo as well), they have to be maintained, you have to constantly be paying attention to the tubes and fuses. The Tube Failure light is just great for keeping track.
Biasing the thing properly will help a lot too.
T.

Hi guys,

thanks a lot for your answers. I'll pay attention to the Bias when I receive a new RM100 and double check fuses and internal connections. I'm not sure yet what I'll take, maybe an RM100 with 6L6's this time ... I can always change them to EL34's later on.

There was an answer from someone from Randall (Ned ?) on this forum but I can't find the link anymore. In that post he said you can replace some of the fuses with higher capacity (example the ones just before the Power Tubes) so it won't blow too fast. Does anyone has a link to this post ?

thanks,

Torento

I went with the RM4 and a VHT power amp specifically because of all the RM100 power section problems I'd heard about.

I've been gigging the RM4 for over a year, and so far so good.

Hi goldsparkletop,

I finally oredered the George Lynch Head, from what I read from this forum, the power section issues can easily be adressed with a simple fuse cange, so here's hoping :wink:

best,

Torento

Bro I'm sorry to say that The Lynch Box I have is blowing fuses. I've blown 5 so far. I talked with Rich about this and he said Randall was having problems with the JJ tubes and that also the fuses were cheap overseas products not the better USA made fuses.

I replaced the first two 250 ma fuses with two 350 USA made fuses and have since blown one of the 350ma's and the other two 250ma's.
The one 350ma blew becasue of a bad JJEL34 I used to replace the suspect JJEL34L which came origional in the Lynch Box. The origional set also had a michrophonic tube so that adds up to three bad tubes from the origional set and one bad one from the new set of JJEL34's i bought seperatly. I now also have an annoying pop sound that isintermittant and inconsistant in volumn and interval. I thought it was a bad preamp tube but I swapped all those out with known good Sylvania NOS Mil specs and the pop is still there.

I'm just not getting a good confident feeling with this product and as I said there are so many issues that I'm not sure where I stand with this amp... it's cool and sounds incredible but it has build quality issues and reliability issues.

I do know this... I've been running my Soldano Hot Rod 50 for nearly 15 years with one fuse blow and when I set it on top of the cab and fire up I play with confidence and excellent tone.

I'm having reliability concerns with this product and I'm not sure how things are going to unfold. There seems to be several bugs that Randall needs to deal with and wether I'm gonna wade thru tha tpile of **** much longer is anyones guess.

Craig

From what I've read, it seems like more people have problems with the RM100 heads than anything, but that may just be because that's probably the most popular MTS amp. This could apply to the Lynch heads as well since they are basically the same amp.

I've got an RM50B combo and have played through it a lot since I bought it last September. I haven't had one single problem with it(knock on wood). Actually, offhand I don't really recall anybody mentioning having trouble with the 50 watt versions.

That is a very interesting point actually.

Khing

My extremely unofficial mental tally/survey of the forum would seem to support that RM100 amps report more issues. I have had my RM50 for a couple of years, sold it to Pete yesterday, with no issues whatsoever. It's just my 2 cents. Go with Egnater, MOD 50 head, 4 channels, tonal bliss, don't look back, ever again.

+1 on go with Egnater. It costs more for a reason. You get what you pay for.