CTC-12 on eBay

[Rob]

Doug,

There aren't many new techs that understand tube circuits, heck they don't even understand SS circuits. Most are only monkeys trained well enough to replace circuit boards or modules until the problem goes away. Tracing a fault to an actual board level component is a lost art. You have to know circuits and understand how they work to do that. It takes training and education and a mind not too lazy to want to learn. Same in automotive repair and most everything else now. It is sad.

I knew a tech who ran a small TV and electronics service shop where I previously lived and I was visiting him one day. He had a fender guitar amp with P-P 6L6's and couldn't for the life of him figure out the fault. He asked me if I would look at it. As soon as I heard the way it cycled on and then went to fuzzy low power I knew exactly what the problem must be. A grid drain resistor on one output tube had opened. At first the tube could work somewhere in it's linear region but within milliseconds of power applied (actually as the circuit was coming up to voltage the tube would get cut off). I had it fixed in a jiffy. Boy was he impressed, or should I say the boy was impressed.