Hey there… just got a brand new PS-100 last week to use with a JCM-800 to play at bedroom levels with the amp cranked and everything sounds great and seems to be working but damn… it smells like it’s about to go nuclear. I’ve played through it about 3 separate times now for about an hour and each time it does it. My wife thinks I’m trying to burn the house down. Is this normal for the unit? Thanks!
Hello and welcome to the forum! If you are cranking up your amp to fairly high levels, it will cause the reactive load in the Power Station to get very hot. This is normal and in this scenario when the PS-100 is new, the ink silk screening on some of the components does burn off and thus creates a burning smell. If you push things too hard for too long without a break, you do risk straining the power tubes in your amp as well as the power tubes in the PS-100. As a test, try running the rig and turning the lighting in the room down, or off, and observe the power tubes in both your amp and the PS-100 to see if any of them are glowing bright orange or red. If so, then those tubes may be on the verge of failing. It’s always a good practice to keep the output level of your amp turned down to where you are still happy with the tone and feel but not dimming the volume. If you do run it fully cranked, you should take rest breaks more frequently to give the components a chance to cool down. Hope that helps. Cheers! Gil
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Hi Gil! Thanks for the response. I really appreciate it. I followed your advice and it did solve the problem of the burning smell. You were right, I didn’t need to crank my amp as high to get the tone I was looking for. I never owned an attenuator before so I naively thought you could just dime your amp and it would handle it. Haha. Thanks for the tips. Take care!