DriftTone

29/05/2026

🎚️ That crackle when you touch the gain k**b. You know the one.

A Marshall came in sounding great — right up until the player reached for the gain k**b. The moment they touched it, a vicious crackle. The sort of thing that makes you jump back from the amp.

It's one of the most common faults we see. The pot wears over time, the wiper starts dragging across a damaged track, and every small movement gets amplified into noise.

First thing to try is always contact cleaner. Work it back and forth, and often that's enough. A lot of amps leave again after nothing more than that.

This one was beyond that point. The track was too far gone — cleaning would have been a temporary fix at best. The right call was a replacement, sourced to match the original exactly: same value, same taper, same shaft so the original k**b drops straight back on.

Gain control confirmed smooth and quiet through its full range. Clean to crunch with no drama.

👉 Full write-up (with a video of the sweep after repair):
https://www.drifttone.net/from-the-bench/marshall-gain-k**b-replacement/

A Marshall amp crackled viciously every time the gain k**b was touched. Contact cleaner wasn't going to cut it — the pot was too far gone. Correct replacement sourced, fitted, and the control is back to sweeping cleanly from clean to crunch.

28/05/2026

💡 Someone stomped a little too hard.

An Electro-Harmonix Hot Wax dual overdrive came in with the indicator LED for the Hot Tubes channel kicked clean off the board. No LED, no legs — just two bare pads where it used to be.

The good news: the PCB was completely undamaged. No cracked traces, no lifted pads, nothing else touched. The Hot Tubes circuit was still passing signal — it just had nothing to show for it. The Crayon side was completely unaffected throughout.

Full strip-down, pads cleaned up, matched replacement LED fitted and soldered back in the correct orientation. Both channels tested, both LEDs lighting as they should.

Sometimes a repair is straightforward. This was one of those. The only evidence anything happened is the line on the invoice.

👉 Full write-up (with a video of both channels confirmed working):
https://www.drifttone.net/from-the-bench/ehx-hot-wax-led-replacement/

An EHX Hot Wax arrived with its Hot Tubes indicator LED kicked clean off the board. PCB intact, pads cleaned up, matched LED soldered back in. Both channels working again.

27/05/2026

🌀 A piece of Moog history came in completely dead.

A Moogerfooger — part of Bob Moog's analogue stompbox range, hand-assembled, and genuinely loved by everyone from Radiohead to Daft Punk. This one had no power, no signal. Nothing.

The fault was in the power circuit: two surface-mount ICs had failed. Surface-mount components are small — very small — soldered directly onto the board with no legs to grip. Getting them off cleanly without damaging the pads or anything nearby takes patience and the right technique. Both were removed under magnification, pads cleaned back, fresh components reflowed.

Powered straight up. Fully restored.

Moogerfoogers were discontinued in 2018. They're not making any more. Worth repairing.

👉 Full write-up (and a video of it powering up after repair):
https://www.drifttone.net/from-the-bench/moog-moogerfooger-repair/

A Moog Moogerfooger arrived with a dead power circuit — two failed surface-mount ICs taking the unit completely out of action. Carefully removed under magnification, pads cleaned, fresh components reflowed. Fully restored.

26/05/2026

🎸 Came in for reverb. Didn't stay that way.

A Fender '68 Custom Deluxe Reverb arrived with no reverb. The fault was straightforward — both RCA sockets on the rear panel damaged, one snapped clean in half. Fixed.

But with the chassis out, we tested the filter caps. Three of the four were significantly out of tolerance — the kind of slow degradation that quietly robs an amp of headroom and top end over time. Both transformers were loose too. All of it sorted while we were in there.

There was also a tremolo hiss to investigate. Traced, discussed with the customer, decision made to leave it for now and revisit next service. That's sometimes the right call.

What started as one fault became a full service. That's fairly typical with an amp that hasn't been looked at in a while. Better to know what you've got.

👉 Full write-up:
https://www.drifttone.net/from-the-bench/fender-deluxe-reverb-68/

A Fender '68 Custom Deluxe Reverb came in with reverb failure. What followed was a full service — failed RCA sockets, out-of-tolerance filter caps, loose transformers, and a tremolo fault investigated and discussed.

25/05/2026

🔴 Big M**f Pi sounding thin and weak — but why?

The transistor we suspected passed a bench diode test. Junctions looked fine. Most people would stop there.

But a diode test only checks the junctions in isolation. A transistor can pass that and still fail under real operating conditions. The only way to know for certain is substitution — pull it, fit a known-good equivalent, and see what the voltages do.

Q1 was saturated: conducting flat out, not amplifying. The collector was sitting at 0.2V when it should have been around 4.5V. New BC550C fitted, voltages back in range, confirmed against a reference unit — full sustain restored.

If your M**f is sounding thin or lacking body, the transistor bias voltages are worth checking. It's more common than you'd think.

👉 Full write-up on the site:
https://www.drifttone.net/from-the-bench/ehx-big-muff-pi-v9/

**f

An EHX Big M**f Pi v9 came in sounding thin and weak. Transistor bias voltage measurement pinpointed a failed Q1 — saturated, not amplifying. Replaced with a BC550C, fully restored.

23/05/2026

Lots of work on the https://www.drifttone.net website today! Take a look especially if you need help with audio electronics repair in north west, UK