A Fender Supersonic combo landed on my bench as an urgent job today. Ticket
said "Power, but no output". The pilot light on the front panel lit up, but
that was about it. There was no sign of the output tubes being alight at
all. When I had removed the chassis from the cabinet, it was clear that
every filament in the whole amp was wired by a single parallel run, and that
this was common with the supply to the pilot light. There is a 10 amp
filament fuse in the line, that looks as though it might be after the pilot
light take off point, but the fuse was intact. You couldn't immediately see
the undersides of the first few preamp tubes on that wiring run, due to
there being a back panel PCB above them, which carried the effects send and
return jacks and a couple of pots etc. However, you could get to the bottoms
of the output tubes, and there was no voltage at the filament pins of
either.

I removed the PCB that was in the way, and it was then apparent what was
wrong. The hand soldering of just about all the tube socket wires, and
especially the thicker and doubled-up filament wires, was astoundingly poor
for a Fender branded product. The solder had not properly taken to any of
the filament pin tags on the tube bases, and the mechanical appearance of
each joint was appalling. The amp was definitely built using lead-free
solder, but it looked as though nobody had told the hand assembly part of
the production line, and they were trying to make the joints with soldering
irons with their tip temperature set to produce correct joints with lower
melting point leaded solder ...

A reflow of the offending joints with some new solder fed in, restored the
filament supply to the output tubes and those that followed after them, and
the amp then worked just fine.

Other than the normal references to Fender being in California USA, I could
find no indication of where this amp had actually been built. These amps are
not cheap, and I would normally associate the name Fender with a quality
product. In this case, however, I felt very disappointed for the owner. In
order for poor workmanship like this to find its way out of the factory
door, either the QA is non-existent or poorly structured, or else the QA
manager needs his arse firing out of the job ...

Arfa

"Arfa Daily"

Other than the normal references to Fender being in California USA, I
could find no indication of where this amp had actually been built.

** Fender has its main manufacturing facility in Mexico. Staff from the US
normally supervise the work - but being sent to Mexico for a stint of
supervision work is considered tantamount to torture.


These amps are not cheap, and I would normally associate the name Fender
with a quality product.

** Not been true for a very long time - since CBS sold the business to a
group of former managers and production went south of the border.


In this case, however, I felt very disappointed for the owner. In order
for poor workmanship like this to find its way out of the factory door,
either the QA is non-existent or poorly structured, or else the QA manager
needs his arse firing out of the job ...

** You say the solder was lead free and this is the norm now with Fender
products.

IME - the flux that comes with lead free solder wire is of the " no-clean"
type or else is water soluble to allow PCB cleaning in a detergent bath
instead of nasty, expensive hydrocarbons.

It's crap at soldering anything that is not *perfectly* tarnish free.

I always use Multicore Savbit and have found nothing else works quite as
well for repair work - the flux is excellent for mildly tarnished surfaces
and the solder doe not dissolve fine copper wires like others do.



.... Phil

On Jun 3, 8:15*pm, "Arfa Daily" wrote:
A Fender Supersonic combo landed on my bench as an urgent job today. Ticket
said "Power, but no output". The pilot light on the front panel lit up, but
that was about it. There was no sign of the output tubes being alight at
all. When I had removed the chassis from the cabinet, it was clear that
every filament in the whole amp was wired by a single parallel run, and that
this was common with the supply to the pilot light. There is a 10 amp
filament fuse in the line, that looks as though it might be after the pilot
light take off point, but the fuse was intact. You couldn't immediately see
the undersides of the first few preamp tubes on that wiring run, due to
there being a back panel PCB above them, which carried the effects send and
return jacks and a couple of pots etc. However, you could get to the bottoms
of the output tubes, and there was no voltage at the filament pins of
either.

I removed the PCB that was in the way, and it was then apparent what was
wrong. The hand soldering of just about all the tube socket wires, and
especially the thicker and doubled-up filament wires, was astoundingly poor
for a Fender branded product. The solder had not properly taken to any of
the filament pin tags on the tube bases, and the mechanical appearance of
each joint was appalling. The amp was definitely built using lead-free
solder, but it looked as though nobody had told the hand assembly part of
the production line, and they were trying to make the joints with soldering
irons with their tip temperature set to produce correct joints with lower
melting point leaded solder ...

A reflow of the offending joints with some new solder fed in, restored the
filament supply to the output tubes and those that followed after them, and
the amp then worked just fine.

Other than the normal references to Fender being in California USA, I could
find no indication of where this amp had actually been built. These amps are
not cheap, and I would normally associate the name Fender with a quality
product. In this case, however, I felt very disappointed for the owner. In
order for poor workmanship like this to find its way out of the factory
door, either the QA is non-existent or poorly structured, or else the QA
manager needs his arse firing out of the job ...

Arfa

Did all the rest of the solder joints in the amp look ok?

Did all the rest of the solder joints in the amp look ok?


** PCBs are soldered in an automated process - not by hand like chassis
mount valve sockets have to be.

I'm sure AD looked at all the hand soldering and went over again, if need
be.




.... Phil

Arfa Daily wrote in message
...
A Fender Supersonic combo landed on my bench as an urgent job today.
Ticket
said "Power, but no output". The pilot light on the front panel lit up,
but
that was about it. There was no sign of the output tubes being alight at
all. When I had removed the chassis from the cabinet, it was clear that
every filament in the whole amp was wired by a single parallel run, and
that
this was common with the supply to the pilot light. There is a 10 amp
filament fuse in the line, that looks as though it might be after the
pilot
light take off point, but the fuse was intact. You couldn't immediately
see
the undersides of the first few preamp tubes on that wiring run, due to
there being a back panel PCB above them, which carried the effects send
and
return jacks and a couple of pots etc. However, you could get to the
bottoms
of the output tubes, and there was no voltage at the filament pins of
either.

I removed the PCB that was in the way, and it was then apparent what was
wrong. The hand soldering of just about all the tube socket wires, and
especially the thicker and doubled-up filament wires, was astoundingly
poor
for a Fender branded product. The solder had not properly taken to any of
the filament pin tags on the tube bases, and the mechanical appearance of
each joint was appalling. The amp was definitely built using lead-free
solder, but it looked as though nobody had told the hand assembly part of
the production line, and they were trying to make the joints with
soldering
irons with their tip temperature set to produce correct joints with lower
melting point leaded solder ...

A reflow of the offending joints with some new solder fed in, restored the
filament supply to the output tubes and those that followed after them,
and
the amp then worked just fine.

Other than the normal references to Fender being in California USA, I
could
find no indication of where this amp had actually been built. These amps
are
not cheap, and I would normally associate the name Fender with a quality
product. In this case, however, I felt very disappointed for the owner. In
order for poor workmanship like this to find its way out of the factory
door, either the QA is non-existent or poorly structured, or else the QA
manager needs his arse firing out of the job ...

Arfa


Is ther a ul.com E number on the pcb overlay?
eg E254931 on a 2010 made Fender Frontman with pbfitis then in ul.com
searchbox showed it was China so presumably populated and soldered in China
.. This also showed the board type was not costlier higher temp type for PbF
so similarly suggestive of lack of Fender QC. No mention of PbF or RoHS on
that amp
But would hand wiring to valve sockets be done over there or in the USA?

En el artículo , N_Cook
escribió:

But would hand wiring to valve sockets be done over there or in the USA?

Labour intensive, so they would be looking for the cheapest labour
available, i.e. China.

--
(\__/)
(='.'=)
(")_(")

wrote in message
...
On Jun 3, 8:15 pm, "Arfa Daily" wrote:
A Fender Supersonic combo landed on my bench as an urgent job today.
Ticket
said "Power, but no output". The pilot light on the front panel lit up,
but
that was about it. There was no sign of the output tubes being alight at
all. When I had removed the chassis from the cabinet, it was clear that
every filament in the whole amp was wired by a single parallel run, and
that
this was common with the supply to the pilot light. There is a 10 amp
filament fuse in the line, that looks as though it might be after the
pilot
light take off point, but the fuse was intact. You couldn't immediately
see
the undersides of the first few preamp tubes on that wiring run, due to
there being a back panel PCB above them, which carried the effects send
and
return jacks and a couple of pots etc. However, you could get to the
bottoms
of the output tubes, and there was no voltage at the filament pins of
either.

I removed the PCB that was in the way, and it was then apparent what was
wrong. The hand soldering of just about all the tube socket wires, and
especially the thicker and doubled-up filament wires, was astoundingly
poor
for a Fender branded product. The solder had not properly taken to any of
the filament pin tags on the tube bases, and the mechanical appearance of
each joint was appalling. The amp was definitely built using lead-free
solder, but it looked as though nobody had told the hand assembly part of
the production line, and they were trying to make the joints with
soldering
irons with their tip temperature set to produce correct joints with lower
melting point leaded solder ...

A reflow of the offending joints with some new solder fed in, restored
the
filament supply to the output tubes and those that followed after them,
and
the amp then worked just fine.

Other than the normal references to Fender being in California USA, I
could
find no indication of where this amp had actually been built. These amps
are
not cheap, and I would normally associate the name Fender with a quality
product. In this case, however, I felt very disappointed for the owner.
In
order for poor workmanship like this to find its way out of the factory
door, either the QA is non-existent or poorly structured, or else the QA
manager needs his arse firing out of the job ...

Arfa

Did all the rest of the solder joints in the amp look ok?

The ones on the PCBs looked 'fair' - as much as lead-free joints ever look
ok on anyone's equipment these days ...

Arfa

"Phil Allison" wrote in message
...




Did all the rest of the solder joints in the amp look ok?


** PCBs are soldered in an automated process - not by hand like chassis
mount valve sockets have to be.

I'm sure AD looked at all the hand soldering and went over again, if need
be.




... Phil


Yes, I went over any hand done joints on the bases, that looked anything
less than sound both mechanically and electrically. By far, the worst ones
were the filament feeds, because, I guess, they were thicker, and there was
two of them at each pin, where the run came in to each base, and departed
again for the next base along.

Arfa

"N_Cook" wrote in message
...
Arfa Daily wrote in message
...
A Fender Supersonic combo landed on my bench as an urgent job today.
Ticket
said "Power, but no output". The pilot light on the front panel lit up,
but
that was about it. There was no sign of the output tubes being alight at
all. When I had removed the chassis from the cabinet, it was clear that
every filament in the whole amp was wired by a single parallel run, and
that
this was common with the supply to the pilot light. There is a 10 amp
filament fuse in the line, that looks as though it might be after the
pilot
light take off point, but the fuse was intact. You couldn't immediately
see
the undersides of the first few preamp tubes on that wiring run, due to
there being a back panel PCB above them, which carried the effects send
and
return jacks and a couple of pots etc. However, you could get to the
bottoms
of the output tubes, and there was no voltage at the filament pins of
either.

I removed the PCB that was in the way, and it was then apparent what was
wrong. The hand soldering of just about all the tube socket wires, and
especially the thicker and doubled-up filament wires, was astoundingly
poor
for a Fender branded product. The solder had not properly taken to any of
the filament pin tags on the tube bases, and the mechanical appearance of
each joint was appalling. The amp was definitely built using lead-free
solder, but it looked as though nobody had told the hand assembly part of
the production line, and they were trying to make the joints with
soldering
irons with their tip temperature set to produce correct joints with lower
melting point leaded solder ...

A reflow of the offending joints with some new solder fed in, restored
the
filament supply to the output tubes and those that followed after them,
and
the amp then worked just fine.

Other than the normal references to Fender being in California USA, I
could
find no indication of where this amp had actually been built. These amps
are
not cheap, and I would normally associate the name Fender with a quality
product. In this case, however, I felt very disappointed for the owner.
In
order for poor workmanship like this to find its way out of the factory
door, either the QA is non-existent or poorly structured, or else the QA
manager needs his arse firing out of the job ...

Arfa


Is ther a ul.com E number on the pcb overlay?
eg E254931 on a 2010 made Fender Frontman with pbfitis then in ul.com
searchbox showed it was China so presumably populated and soldered in
China
. This also showed the board type was not costlier higher temp type for
PbF
so similarly suggestive of lack of Fender QC. No mention of PbF or RoHS on
that amp
But would hand wiring to valve sockets be done over there or in the USA?




Can't say. There is a music festival going on in the village all weekend,
with many performers in many venues. The owner of this amp is one of them -
hence the urgency to the job. It was in, on the bench, fixed, and on its way
back inside 2 hours, so not still in my possession to check for UL numbers.

Arfa

I've seen numerous examples in my own purchases (since I don't do regular
repair work anymore), where hand soldering has failed just from opening the
cases.

I always open any line voltage operated consumer/imported/China-made gear to
examine all of the hand assembly work.

What appears to be standard procedure is that the leads for attachment have
been tinned previously, so the assembler only needs to hold the iron on the
connection long enough to get the slightest amount of reflow to take place,
before moving on to the next connection.

The result in many cases is a temporary connection.. the way a welder would
tack-weld a part in place to hold it temporarily before doing the finish
weld which actually secures the part.

Good mechanical connections are essentially a thing of the past, rarely ever
performed in low-end equipment anymore.. at most (generally) a lead might be
poked thru a terminal hole before adding solder, but the leads of the vacuum
tube era were nearly always formed tightly around the terminal before
soldering.

Tacking pre-tinned leads to existing soldered connections is the present
standard of quality that's accepted, even by the marketers (rarely the
actual manufacturers) of better quality equipment.

I believe QA is a figment of the imagination any more, as far as consumer
gear goes.. I would expect that the highest priority is placed on the
external appearance of the finished product, and nothing else.

See.. store return policy.

A new consumer market acronym for the old use of MSRP..
Marketer's store return policy.

--
Cheers,
WB
..............


"Arfa Daily" wrote in message
...
A Fender Supersonic combo landed on my bench as an urgent job today. Ticket
said "Power, but no output". The pilot light on the front panel lit up, but
that was about it. There was no sign of the output tubes being alight at
all. When I had removed the chassis from the cabinet, it was clear that
every filament in the whole amp was wired by a single parallel run, and
that this was common with the supply to the pilot light. There is a 10 amp
filament fuse in the line, that looks as though it might be after the pilot
light take off point, but the fuse was intact. You couldn't immediately see
the undersides of the first few preamp tubes on that wiring run, due to
there being a back panel PCB above them, which carried the effects send and
return jacks and a couple of pots etc. However, you could get to the
bottoms of the output tubes, and there was no voltage at the filament pins
of either.

I removed the PCB that was in the way, and it was then apparent what was
wrong. The hand soldering of just about all the tube socket wires, and
especially the thicker and doubled-up filament wires, was astoundingly
poor for a Fender branded product. The solder had not properly taken to
any of the filament pin tags on the tube bases, and the mechanical
appearance of each joint was appalling. The amp was definitely built using
lead-free solder, but it looked as though nobody had told the hand
assembly part of the production line, and they were trying to make the
joints with soldering irons with their tip temperature set to produce
correct joints with lower melting point leaded solder ...

A reflow of the offending joints with some new solder fed in, restored the
filament supply to the output tubes and those that followed after them,
and the amp then worked just fine.

Other than the normal references to Fender being in California USA, I
could find no indication of where this amp had actually been built. These
amps are not cheap, and I would normally associate the name Fender with a
quality product. In this case, however, I felt very disappointed for the
owner. In order for poor workmanship like this to find its way out of the
factory door, either the QA is non-existent or poorly structured, or else
the QA manager needs his arse firing out of the job ...

Arfa

"Arfa Daily" wrote in message
...
A Fender Supersonic combo landed on my bench as an urgent job today.
Ticket said "Power, but no output". The pilot light on the front panel lit
up, but that was about it. There was no sign of the output tubes being
alight at all. When I had removed the chassis from the cabinet, it was
clear that every filament in the whole amp was wired by a single parallel
run, and that this was common with the supply to the pilot light. There is
a 10 amp filament fuse in the line, that looks as though it might be after
the pilot light take off point, but the fuse was intact. You couldn't
immediately see the undersides of the first few preamp tubes on that
wiring run, due to there being a back panel PCB above them, which carried
the effects send and return jacks and a couple of pots etc. However, you
could get to the bottoms of the output tubes, and there was no voltage at
the filament pins of either.

I removed the PCB that was in the way, and it was then apparent what was
wrong. The hand soldering of just about all the tube socket wires, and
especially the thicker and doubled-up filament wires, was astoundingly
poor for a Fender branded product. The solder had not properly taken to
any of the filament pin tags on the tube bases, and the mechanical
appearance of each joint was appalling. The amp was definitely built
using lead-free solder, but it looked as though nobody had told the hand
assembly part of the production line, and they were trying to make the
joints with soldering irons with their tip temperature set to produce
correct joints with lower melting point leaded solder ...

A reflow of the offending joints with some new solder fed in, restored
the filament supply to the output tubes and those that followed after
them, and the amp then worked just fine.

Other than the normal references to Fender being in California USA, I
could find no indication of where this amp had actually been built. These
amps are not cheap, and I would normally associate the name Fender with a
quality product. In this case, however, I felt very disappointed for the
owner. In order for poor workmanship like this to find its way out of the
factory door, either the QA is non-existent or poorly structured, or else
the QA manager needs his arse firing out of the job ...

Arfa



"Wild_Bill" wrote in message
...
I've seen numerous examples in my own purchases (since I don't do regular
repair work anymore), where hand soldering has failed just from opening
the cases.

I always open any line voltage operated consumer/imported/China-made gear
to examine all of the hand assembly work.

What appears to be standard procedure is that the leads for attachment
have been tinned previously, so the assembler only needs to hold the iron
on the connection long enough to get the slightest amount of reflow to
take place, before moving on to the next connection.

The result in many cases is a temporary connection.. the way a welder
would tack-weld a part in place to hold it temporarily before doing the
finish weld which actually secures the part.

Good mechanical connections are essentially a thing of the past, rarely
ever performed in low-end equipment anymore.. at most (generally) a lead
might be poked thru a terminal hole before adding solder, but the leads of
the vacuum tube era were nearly always formed tightly around the terminal
before soldering.

Tacking pre-tinned leads to existing soldered connections is the present
standard of quality that's accepted, even by the marketers (rarely the
actual manufacturers) of better quality equipment.

I believe QA is a figment of the imagination any more, as far as consumer
gear goes.. I would expect that the highest priority is placed on the
external appearance of the finished product, and nothing else.

See.. store return policy.

A new consumer market acronym for the old use of MSRP..
Marketer's store return policy.

--
Cheers,
WB
.............



In general, I would agree, but for the most part, tubed guitar amps,
particularly from the 'big' names, are expensive specialist items, and
subject to limited production runs of hundreds at a time, rather than the
hundreds of thousands of cheap Chinese DVD players, or whatever. It is quite
normal for these amplifiers to have signed production progress stickers on
the chassis, and a final QA test sticker. Sometimes, even a 'musicality'
sticker, so I think that for the most part, QA in some form at least, still
exists for the majority of manufacturers of these products. Apart from this,
many examples have adjustable bias for the output tubes, so as a final or
almost final operation, a real person has to have their hands and eyes
inside the chassis to carry out this task.

As to the wires on this one, most were wrapped around the pins in at least a
token fashion, prior to being soldered. The filament wires were of a rather
thicker gauge which certainly *could* have been wrapped around the pins, but
wasn't, presumably because of the extra time that it would have taken to do
it neatly and properly. Or perhaps it was just an example of a lazy or
poorly trained production worker ? There was not really a *lack* of solder
on the joints, just that they were poor, with the solder having not stuck
'well' to either the wires or the tags on the bases. I would have to say
that it looked to me just typical of a joint - of any variety of solder -
that had been made with an iron that was either too cold, or not up to the
job in terms of tip thermal inertia. Or again, maybe just a worker that was
poorly trained in the art of soldering. Either way, poor workmanship like
this, really should have been picked up somewhere in the build process ...

Arfa

Arfa Daily wrote in message
...

"Arfa Daily" wrote in message
...
A Fender Supersonic combo landed on my bench as an urgent job today.
Ticket said "Power, but no output". The pilot light on the front panel
lit
up, but that was about it. There was no sign of the output tubes being
alight at all. When I had removed the chassis from the cabinet, it was
clear that every filament in the whole amp was wired by a single
parallel
run, and that this was common with the supply to the pilot light. There
is
a 10 amp filament fuse in the line, that looks as though it might be
after
the pilot light take off point, but the fuse was intact. You couldn't
immediately see the undersides of the first few preamp tubes on that
wiring run, due to there being a back panel PCB above them, which
carried
the effects send and return jacks and a couple of pots etc. However, you
could get to the bottoms of the output tubes, and there was no voltage
at
the filament pins of either.

I removed the PCB that was in the way, and it was then apparent what
was
wrong. The hand soldering of just about all the tube socket wires, and
especially the thicker and doubled-up filament wires, was astoundingly
poor for a Fender branded product. The solder had not properly taken to
any of the filament pin tags on the tube bases, and the mechanical
appearance of each joint was appalling. The amp was definitely built
using lead-free solder, but it looked as though nobody had told the
hand
assembly part of the production line, and they were trying to make the
joints with soldering irons with their tip temperature set to produce
correct joints with lower melting point leaded solder ...

A reflow of the offending joints with some new solder fed in, restored
the filament supply to the output tubes and those that followed after
them, and the amp then worked just fine.

Other than the normal references to Fender being in California USA, I
could find no indication of where this amp had actually been built.
These
amps are not cheap, and I would normally associate the name Fender with
a
quality product. In this case, however, I felt very disappointed for
the
owner. In order for poor workmanship like this to find its way out of
the
factory door, either the QA is non-existent or poorly structured, or
else
the QA manager needs his arse firing out of the job ...

Arfa



"Wild_Bill" wrote in message
...
I've seen numerous examples in my own purchases (since I don't do
regular
repair work anymore), where hand soldering has failed just from opening
the cases.

I always open any line voltage operated consumer/imported/China-made
gear
to examine all of the hand assembly work.

What appears to be standard procedure is that the leads for attachment
have been tinned previously, so the assembler only needs to hold the
iron
on the connection long enough to get the slightest amount of reflow to
take place, before moving on to the next connection.

The result in many cases is a temporary connection.. the way a welder
would tack-weld a part in place to hold it temporarily before doing the
finish weld which actually secures the part.

Good mechanical connections are essentially a thing of the past, rarely
ever performed in low-end equipment anymore.. at most (generally) a lead
might be poked thru a terminal hole before adding solder, but the leads
of
the vacuum tube era were nearly always formed tightly around the
terminal
before soldering.

Tacking pre-tinned leads to existing soldered connections is the present

standard of quality that's accepted, even by the marketers (rarely the
actual manufacturers) of better quality equipment.

I believe QA is a figment of the imagination any more, as far as
consumer
gear goes.. I would expect that the highest priority is placed on the
external appearance of the finished product, and nothing else.

See.. store return policy.

A new consumer market acronym for the old use of MSRP..
Marketer's store return policy.

--
Cheers,
WB
.............



In general, I would agree, but for the most part, tubed guitar amps,
particularly from the 'big' names, are expensive specialist items, and
subject to limited production runs of hundreds at a time, rather than the
hundreds of thousands of cheap Chinese DVD players, or whatever. It is
quite
normal for these amplifiers to have signed production progress stickers on
the chassis, and a final QA test sticker. Sometimes, even a 'musicality'
sticker, so I think that for the most part, QA in some form at least,
still
exists for the majority of manufacturers of these products. Apart from
this,
many examples have adjustable bias for the output tubes, so as a final or
almost final operation, a real person has to have their hands and eyes
inside the chassis to carry out this task.

As to the wires on this one, most were wrapped around the pins in at least
a
token fashion, prior to being soldered. The filament wires were of a
rather
thicker gauge which certainly *could* have been wrapped around the pins,
but
wasn't, presumably because of the extra time that it would have taken to
do
it neatly and properly. Or perhaps it was just an example of a lazy or
poorly trained production worker ? There was not really a *lack* of solder
on the joints, just that they were poor, with the solder having not stuck
'well' to either the wires or the tags on the bases. I would have to say
that it looked to me just typical of a joint - of any variety of solder -
that had been made with an iron that was either too cold, or not up to the
job in terms of tip thermal inertia. Or again, maybe just a worker that
was
poorly trained in the art of soldering. Either way, poor workmanship like
this, really should have been picked up somewhere in the build process ...

Arfa


The QC and safety issues with that 2010 Fender Frontman were mains Tx
hanging on ,just, by 1 of the 4 bolts, the others the nuts had dropped off,
the fourth was loose.

Lack of fettling? of the swarfy surrounds of drilled holes in an Aluminium
block that was intermediary between power devices and the heatsink, taking
the mounting bolts. Although white goo present it was not compressed due to
the interference of this swarf so heat only passing via the mounting bolts.

On Sun, 05 Jun 2011 10:12:32 +0100, Arfa Daily wrote:

"Arfa Daily" wrote in message
...
A Fender Supersonic combo landed on my bench as an urgent job today.
Ticket said "Power, but no output". The pilot light on the front panel
lit up, but that was about it. There was no sign of the output tubes
being alight at all. When I had removed the chassis from the cabinet,
it was clear that every filament in the whole amp was wired by a single
parallel run, and that this was common with the supply to the pilot
light. There is a 10 amp filament fuse in the line, that looks as
though it might be after the pilot light take off point, but the fuse
was intact. You couldn't immediately see the undersides of the first
few preamp tubes on that wiring run, due to there being a back panel
PCB above them, which carried the effects send and return jacks and a
couple of pots etc. However, you could get to the bottoms of the output
tubes, and there was no voltage at the filament pins of either.

I removed the PCB that was in the way, and it was then apparent what
was wrong. The hand soldering of just about all the tube socket wires,
and especially the thicker and doubled-up filament wires, was
astoundingly poor for a Fender branded product. The solder had not
properly taken to any of the filament pin tags on the tube bases, and
the mechanical appearance of each joint was appalling. The amp was
definitely built using lead-free solder, but it looked as though
nobody had told the hand assembly part of the production line, and
they were trying to make the joints with soldering irons with their
tip temperature set to produce correct joints with lower melting point
leaded solder ...

A reflow of the offending joints with some new solder fed in, restored
the filament supply to the output tubes and those that followed after
them, and the amp then worked just fine.

Other than the normal references to Fender being in California USA, I
could find no indication of where this amp had actually been built.
These amps are not cheap, and I would normally associate the name
Fender with a quality product. In this case, however, I felt very
disappointed for the owner. In order for poor workmanship like this to
find its way out of the factory door, either the QA is non-existent or
poorly structured, or else the QA manager needs his arse firing out of
the job ...

Arfa



"Wild_Bill" wrote in message
...
I've seen numerous examples in my own purchases (since I don't do
regular repair work anymore), where hand soldering has failed just from
opening the cases.

I always open any line voltage operated consumer/imported/China-made
gear to examine all of the hand assembly work.

What appears to be standard procedure is that the leads for attachment
have been tinned previously, so the assembler only needs to hold the
iron on the connection long enough to get the slightest amount of
reflow to take place, before moving on to the next connection.

The result in many cases is a temporary connection.. the way a welder
would tack-weld a part in place to hold it temporarily before doing the
finish weld which actually secures the part.

Good mechanical connections are essentially a thing of the past, rarely
ever performed in low-end equipment anymore.. at most (generally) a
lead might be poked thru a terminal hole before adding solder, but the
leads of the vacuum tube era were nearly always formed tightly around
the terminal before soldering.

Tacking pre-tinned leads to existing soldered connections is the
present standard of quality that's accepted, even by the marketers
(rarely the actual manufacturers) of better quality equipment.

I believe QA is a figment of the imagination any more, as far as
consumer gear goes.. I would expect that the highest priority is placed
on the external appearance of the finished product, and nothing else.

See.. store return policy.

A new consumer market acronym for the old use of MSRP.. Marketer's
store return policy.

--
Cheers,
WB
.............



In general, I would agree, but for the most part, tubed guitar amps,
particularly from the 'big' names, are expensive specialist items, and
subject to limited production runs of hundreds at a time, rather than
the hundreds of thousands of cheap Chinese DVD players, or whatever. It
is quite normal for these amplifiers to have signed production progress
stickers on the chassis, and a final QA test sticker. Sometimes, even a
'musicality' sticker, so I think that for the most part, QA in some form
at least, still exists for the majority of manufacturers of these
products. Apart from this, many examples have adjustable bias for the
output tubes, so as a final or almost final operation, a real person has
to have their hands and eyes inside the chassis to carry out this task.

As to the wires on this one, most were wrapped around the pins in at
least a token fashion, prior to being soldered. The filament wires were
of a rather thicker gauge which certainly *could* have been wrapped
around the pins, but wasn't, presumably because of the extra time that
it would have taken to do it neatly and properly. Or perhaps it was just
an example of a lazy or poorly trained production worker ? There was not
really a *lack* of solder on the joints, just that they were poor, with
the solder having not stuck 'well' to either the wires or the tags on
the bases. I would have to say that it looked to me just typical of a
joint - of any variety of solder - that had been made with an iron that
was either too cold, or not up to the job in terms of tip thermal
inertia. Or again, maybe just a worker that was poorly trained in the
art of soldering. Either way, poor workmanship like this, really should
have been picked up somewhere in the build process ...

Arfa

The absolute most horrible quality construction and solder job on an amp
I've seen was a Trace Elliot Velocette. It took me two painstaking hours
to re-route circuits by hand wiring. And this was a small 20 watt combo
with an 8" speaker.



--
Live Fast Die Young, Leave A Pretty Corpse

In general, I would agree, but for the most part, tubed guitar amps,
particularly from the 'big' names, are expensive specialist items, and
subject to limited production runs of hundreds at a time, rather than
the hundreds of thousands of cheap Chinese DVD players, or whatever. It
is quite normal for these amplifiers to have signed production progress
stickers on the chassis, and a final QA test sticker. Sometimes, even a
'musicality' sticker, so I think that for the most part, QA in some form
at least, still exists for the majority of manufacturers of these
products. Apart from this, many examples have adjustable bias for the
output tubes, so as a final or almost final operation, a real person has
to have their hands and eyes inside the chassis to carry out this task.

As to the wires on this one, most were wrapped around the pins in at
least a token fashion, prior to being soldered. The filament wires were
of a rather thicker gauge which certainly *could* have been wrapped
around the pins, but wasn't, presumably because of the extra time that
it would have taken to do it neatly and properly. Or perhaps it was just
an example of a lazy or poorly trained production worker ? There was not
really a *lack* of solder on the joints, just that they were poor, with
the solder having not stuck 'well' to either the wires or the tags on
the bases. I would have to say that it looked to me just typical of a
joint - of any variety of solder - that had been made with an iron that
was either too cold, or not up to the job in terms of tip thermal
inertia. Or again, maybe just a worker that was poorly trained in the
art of soldering. Either way, poor workmanship like this, really should
have been picked up somewhere in the build process ...

Arfa

The absolute most horrible quality construction and solder job on an amp
I've seen was a Trace Elliot Velocette. It took me two painstaking hours
to re-route circuits by hand wiring. And this was a small 20 watt combo
with an 8" speaker.



--

Interestingly, I would have said that the Trace Idiots I've seen here for
the most part, fall in the 'better built' category ... But then I would
have said that about Fenders as well before seeing the dreadful job that had
been done on this one !

Arfa

"Arfa Daily"

Interestingly, I would have said that the Trace Idiots I've seen here for
the most part, fall in the 'better built' category ...


** So you have not seen the 4 x EL84 ( Trace Elliot- Gibson) models where
the valve sockets shrink due heat ?

The EL84s' pins become severely toed-in and installing new valves is near
impossible - removing the old sockets and fitting 4 new ceramic ones is
about a 3 hour job.

Then you have to wash all the white flux reside off the PCB too, or the amp
will crackle and fart.



..... Phil

"Phil Allison" wrote in message
...

"Arfa Daily"

Interestingly, I would have said that the Trace Idiots I've seen here for
the most part, fall in the 'better built' category ...


** So you have not seen the 4 x EL84 ( Trace Elliot- Gibson) models where
the valve sockets shrink due heat ?

The EL84s' pins become severely toed-in and installing new valves is near
impossible - removing the old sockets and fitting 4 new ceramic ones is
about a 3 hour job.

Then you have to wash all the white flux reside off the PCB too, or the
amp will crackle and fart.



.... Phil



Can't honestly say that one of those has crossed my bench that I can
remember, but I'll know what to look for now ... !

Arfa