How do I fix my amplifier?
Yeah, well, after determining not very much except there wasn't anything wrong with any of the components, I gave up.
Until tonight.
I plugged my footbox thing into my practice amp, and wouldn't you know it - quiet/dirty sound from it too. I started trying to adjust the volume and that with my foot, and immediately, the noise jumped WAY up in volume, and became nothing but 60 cycle hum.
Started dissecting things... lo and behold, the cable coming out of the foot box was corroded beyond recognition. It was no longer shiny at all, and had pitting all over it like crazy.
The Grand Moff wins a cookie - it was caused by upstream noise being amplified.
How did I fix these cables? Well, coca cola plus foil = chrome polish. I don't have any foil, so I threw some coke on a scrubbing thing and tried that - not much success. Next idea (and a brilliant one, if I do say so myself) was to take the orange pumice soap under the sink, apply it to a wad of toilet paper, and give it a good sanding. That seems to have restored some of the luster, though a lot of the pitting is still present/evident.
Moral? I guess it's "always unplug anything that's headed to a 450 watt amplifier when you're done with it."
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