Peavey & My Horrible Experience

[ictponder]

I've had something going on for quite some time with an amp I purchased back in 2009. I'm gonna just copy/paste. I'm about ready to trash this amp and count it as a loss.

Posted: Tue Aug 03, 2010 6:17 pm

Purchased my Vypyr Tube120 back in September of 2009 and loved it. Played it for about 2 hours and it just died. I replaced the fuse and it worked fine for about 10 minutes and it died again. At that point I knew something was wrong and decided to call someone.
Since I bought it from Guitar Center I called them first to find out the appropriate procedure for getting it fixed or replaced. However, since the store manager placed my order on guitarcenter.com there was nothing he could do in store. So I called the Guitar Center hotline and they advised me to call Peavey.

I called Peavey and spoke with customer service. The lady explained to me that I had replaced the fuse with the wrong type of fuse and she mailed me some replacement slow burn ceramic fuses...awesome. However, the first fuse only lasted about 20 minutes and I decided not to try another one. At this point I am about a month after the purchase. I called Peavey back and explained to them what was happening and was told to call an authorized service center and get my amp looked at. So I called the nearest one and made sure he would be open when I got out of work, which was useless because when I arrived he was closed and would not answer his phone. It wouldn't have been so bad if he wasn't more than an hour away.

I called Peavey and spoke with another customer rep and explained what was going on. I told her that I don't get a lot of time off work and was going to take my amp to another repair facility but not sure when I could do it. She explained that my amp has a 5 year warranty and not to worry, just get it in when I can.

Fast forward to July and I finally have a few days vacation and decide to take my amp to another repair facility. I dropped it off a couple weeks ago and haven't heard from the owner until today, when I called him. He tells me that one of the tubes was faulty and I owe him over $200 in total repairs because it's out of warranty plus installation fee and a bench fee. I wasn't happy as this was when he told me that Peavey tubes only have a 90 day warranty. Yes I know I should have read the warranty info and not relied on customer service to give me all the information. What makes me most upset is that since September, I have only used the amp less than 3 hours.

I called Peavey and talked with a supervisor and he explained that my tubes are out of warranty, which is now my responsibility, but that the repair center is not supposed to charge me a bench fee (can't remember if he also said install as well but I'm not sure) He said he will call the shop owner tomorrow and I will hear from one of them.

I called guitar center and explained what was happening and luckily their computers show that I had called about this problem WELL within the 90 day warranty and after the rep spoke with his supervisor he said they are going to send me a whole new set of tubes free of charge. Now I just need to call Peavey tomorrow and hope they will agree to have the tubes sent to the repair shop and have the guy install them. This whole process has been a headache and makes me wonder why Peavey would use tubes that have a 7/10 defect rate. The repair shop owner says that Peavey no longer uses the 6L6 tubes, but I bought the dang thing not even a year ago...is this correct?

Do you guys think I am justified in my actions?

BTW: I was never able to get the amp to work via USB with Reaper, I haven't done any updates obviously with other problems.

The end...

Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 8:17 am

[Quote:
If you had replaced the tubes under warranty from the get-go, you wouldn't be here now, would you?

That's exactly what I tried doing (even though I had no idea the tubes were bad - just knew something was wrong with the amp). Tried within the first 2 weeks but GC sent me to GC.com and GC.com sent me to Peavey since it was purchased online through GC. Peavey sent me fuses in hopes it would solve the problem and after all was said and done, I was out of my warranty by time I got it to a shop. Peavey telling me to take my time cause the amp had a 5 year warranty didn't help either.

I got the 7/10 defect rate from the repair shop. He said tubes are only made by 4 company's worldwide and don't have any quality control and that the russian tubes are the best. I assumed he knew what he was talking about.

Posted: Wed Aug 04, 2010 4:03 pm

Well it looks like this tune is coming to an end.

I got a call today from peavey and they are going to pay the repair shop for a new set of tubes and labor. They are replacing the original tubes with newer Ruby tubes, which they say are better. They said they weren't sure what type of tubes GC were going to send me or if they would even be good so this is probably a better route.

I'm just glad I can finally use the damn thing after almost a year of it being broke from day one

Posted: Thu Dec 09, 2010 6:13 pm

Long time no update...

So back in August I had my amp shipped to the nearest repair shop and he found that the tubes were bad and replaced them with new Ruby tubes. Peavey agreed to pay for the work because Guitar Center had proof that I called within the warranty date about the amp not working but they also stated that it was a courtesy. When I got the amp back (took 2 months to repair?) it worked for about 20 minutes and started humming really loud like the first time and "POP" it died again. I called the repair shop the next day and he wasn't very happy about the whole situation but agreed to call Peavey to see what could be done. He called back about 2 weeks later and said that Peavey would agree to replace the tubes once more as a courtesy but this would be the last time.

So I had my amp shipped back to the repair shop about a month ago and he confirmed that two of the output tubes had gone bad again and was going to replace them. I just got my amp shipped back yesterday and when I plugged it in today...

I let it warm up for about 5 minutes and instantly heard a loud humming noise when I switched out of standby then a loud crackle noise then it went silent. The lights stay on but no sound will come out at all. WTF gives? I had this amp since September 2009 and I've only been able to play it a couple hours.

P.S. I had one of those restoration companies come out to my house to test my outlets before I got the amp back this last time. They said that my electricity is clean and steady and shouldn't cause any problems with a tubed circuit.

Edit: One thing I did notice when I turned the power switch on is the tubes did not warm up. After about 5 minutes I looked at them and they were cold and dark. I figured this wasn't right but turned it on to see if the amp would even work. Once I was out of standby, the tubes finally turned on and warmed up but by that time the amp was silent.

[GTOJOE]

Sounds like the tech working on your amp is either lazy or incompetent. Obviously if he had of tested it properly he would have seen it was doing this and would have worked out something else is wrong and it's blowing the tubes. I would be making a complaint to Peavey and taking the unit to another repair centre.