Eden WT300 Strang Clipping Sensation

[DasClyde]

I got a '96 Eden WT300 from a Tber a month or two ago. Since then I've experienced two occurrences of strange clipping. The first was about 3 weeks ago at a Battle of the Bands. I don't think I was turned up enough to clip the amp, but in the haze of playing my first show in a long time I may have been. The amp was losing sound for 5-10 seconds for short periods. It didn't go on long and stopped shortly.

The second occurrence was last night at practice. I was definitely not playing loud enough make the amp clip but I had a similar experience. It did it a few times, I turned it on and off, did it once or twice more then stopped. I ceased playing on it at that point just to be safe. I felt the amp up and down and it wasn't too hot (not really hot at all, my laptop gets hotter). I'm almost 100% sure I wasn't clipping it either.

Anyone have any thoughts?

[Col Pruse]

Was it making a crackle/pop sound thru the speaker?

I had a wt400 for a while and they had a design flaw where the soldering would melt and become loose. Not sure if this is your issue. The eden-electronics forum is pretty helpful but they'll first tell you to clean all the inputs/connections on the amp...

[JTE]

It sounds like a problem that's not particularly uncommon with the amps. My WT-400 (11/97) did something similar- sudden volume drops in and out, and the clip light flashed. I had the gain pot replaced in mine years ago.

A few things to try out on it:
A. Open it up (and don't loose any of those infernally small screws that hold the cover on the amp!- one of my least favorite things about these is the fourteen screws of three different sizes you need to remove) and do some cleaning. Use some compressed air to clean out any dust in it and then...
B. Spray some good contact cleaner (Caig's DeOxit) into the small hole in each pot and switch. Turn the knobs back and forth quickly as you spray the cleaner in there.
C. Spray some of the cleaner on a 1/4" plug and insert it in and out of each 1/4" jack on the amp. Make sure you do a good job especially of cleaning the FX jacks. There's a switching jack on the FX return and even if (or especially if) you never use the FX loop, dirt can build up on the switching contacts of that jack and cause intermittent drop outs and surges.
D. Take the 12AX7 out and spray a little into the tube socket, then put the tube back in and out carefully a couple of time to make sure the tube contacts are clean

If those don't solve the problem try a new 12AX7 in there. Despite the observations of some folks, I don't believe the tube really makes that much difference in the Eden WT preamp, so don't worry about spending a lot to get a special tube there. It's not really in the tone shaping circuit as I understand it. I've tried about three different tubes in my WT-400 and despite hearing clear differences in other amps with swapping around preamp tubes, I've not heard any in my Edens (I had two 400s and a WT-600 at one time).

I love the amp and I've not been tempted to buy anything else since '97, but there are some issues I've found with them.

John