Did I f%¤ck up my amp?

Ondoval

Ondoval

Jun 17, 2019
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Norway
#1
Last night at rehersal, while playing the first song, my amp was acting up. Amp is a Darkglass microtube alpha&omega 900. Sounds was coming and going. It sounded exactly like a bad cable does. I tried running bass directly into the amp with different cables, but the problem persisted. Also tried different speaker cables. However..

I took me 2 min to realize my buddy had moved my amp and accidentally changed the settings. The gain (one gain for both channels) was set at 7/10 (I usually have it at 3/10) and the passive mode was engaged. I use an active bass and have a preamp on my board as well. I think the signal was just way too hot. Master volume was a 5/10. We started of the rehersal with a very loud and aggressive song, so I just didnt notice how hot I was running :(

After I dialed the gain down and set it back to the active bass setting, the amp behaved as normal again. We played through our 30min set twice with no issues.

Does it make sense that a very hot signal would cause my amp to act up like this? If yes, is it likely I did some lasting damage to it?

I have a gig coming up this weekend and I am now super worried that I cant trust my amp :( Should I worry about this?

I dont know much about amps, so was hoping someone could make some sense of this and give me some advice on the gig. Should I borrow someone elses amp until I feel reassured mine is ok?
 
#2
Most modern amps have protection circuits so situations like overly hot signals will not cause the amp to damage itself, so I would assume you’ll be ok there, but having a small and inexpensive backup amp is a good idea, just in case.

In this situation I’d be more worried about inadvertently cooking a speaker, especially with a distorted bass sound (I assume your using a Darkglass head is to get heavier sounds) you may not hear that a speaker is telling you it’s not having a good time.
 
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Reactions: TomB and gtirard
#4
TomB said:
Just a guess really, but this ^^. …speaker crying for help. Also just a guess: if it returned to completely normal, you got lucky.
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Jazzjames said:
Most modern amps have protection circuits so situations like overly hot signals will not cause the amp to damage itself, so I would assume you’ll be ok there, but having a small and inexpensive backup amp is a good idea, just in case.

In this situation I’d be more worried about inadvertently cooking a speaker, especially with a distorted bass sound (I assume your using a Darkglass head is to get heavier sounds) you may not hear that a speaker is telling you it’s not having a good time.
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It was all into an 810 ampeg. I didnt hear any signs that it was having a hard time, then again I didnt really notice other things that I really should have, so... I did spend some time with the amp and speaker afterwards and everything sounded like it always have, with both clean and distorted tones.
 
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