Friday 8 January 2021

Testing out an Ibanez TSA-30 after repair

An Ibanez Tube Screamer guitar amplifier, on account of its unreliability and propensity to hum, came into the workshop for investigation and repair.

It became apparent that the engineers decided to compromise on the way the amplifier provides power to the valve pre-amplifier stages and the solid-state signal processor.

Proposed changes to the circuitry were modeled, prototyped and implemented.


After the amplifier passed all the lab tests, it was time to get real.

I invited Greg Gunther, an astute musician and teacher, to answer the client's question, "Is the amplifier bullet proof?"

The recording was not rehearsed and done in a single take with the amplifier set to run between 70% to 90% of its rated output power of 30W.

No equalization, filters or soft clipping were used, in the post processing.