Can this be fixed?

[cooldude_832]

I have a old school kustom head from the mid 70s. Solid State (no tubes )

Sometimes and I think its weather dependent the thing sounds nice and warm like its suppose to.
Other times (90% of the time) it sounds extremely distored and the lower the tone the greater the distortion.

Any Ideas?

The distortation is reguardless of the source and I know its the head not the cab because I ran the cab into another amp and it plays fine and I ran the head into another cab it it sounded like trash.

 

[craig.p]

Step one would be to take the chassis out and look around for loose or corroded connections. If we're talking the old naugahyde amps, I recall the chassis being wide open inside, not much in there at all, therefore easy to do a visual check.

You say weather dependent. Temperature or humidity? You may be able to work that to your advantage. Maybe.

Where has this thing been living?

 

[primussucks_79]

Open the head up and look around for loose solder joints on various components on the circuit boards....i had a similar thing happen to one of my amps, and I opened it up and found that one of my darlington pair xstrs(power transistor)had a bad solder joint and was making it crackle....the more it vibrated the more it crackled...also some of those transistor are chassis mount and they put a thin coat of plastic to isolate the body of the xstr from ground and they tend to deteriorate after time causing the chassis of the xster to short to ground.

 

[GreaserMatt]

There was a thread aout this on harmonycentral, but I think they are down right now???