AER Compact Mobile - Intermittant/No Sound

[JamesGuitar]

Hi - have just joined this forum and after much frustration was hoping some of your superior experience/knowledge may be able to advise me on how to fix my amplifier, or at least diagnose it.

I'm using an AER Compact Mobile acoustic amp and have just started to get a couple of problems (I had the internal batteries replaced a few months ago and that side of it is working fine - it turns on, charges etc and has power without being plugged in to the mains). Here are the two potentially related/unrelated issue's I'm having with this amp...


PROBLEM 1 (since last month) - recently I've been getting distortion at mid to higher volumes (on both mic and guitar channels). This has been happening for the last month. I'm setting the channel gains correctly (safely below peak level with plenty of headroom) - the higher the output level is set, the worse the problem, so am running it at low volumes to avoid distortion. Distortion only occurs during guitar playing or/and singing and the distortion level created is relative to the volume of each note played/sang. I'm not an amp tech but am guessing the speaker cone may need replacing/fixing?

PROBLEM 2 (since last week) - both channels on the amp have simultaneously stopped working. The amp lights/battery etc are still working and although my amp is now silent (regardless of settings) I'm still getting signal from the 'line out', 'send' and 'tuner' outputs whilst playing - I believe the signal goes through the preamp before reaching these, so am assuming the issue here is relating to the power amp or speaker.  I did an outdoor gig last week and whilst I was playing under shelter the amp did get catch a small amount of rain during a windy patch, shortly before the problem first occurred. The amp decided to work again for about 10 minutes a few  days later (both mic and guitar inputs), then continues to stop working.


I look forward to your reply. Thanks and best regards,

James

[Enzo]

Standard suspects would be headphones jack.  Does it work?  And does poking a plug in and out of it a couple times make sound come back?

Same with the FX loop jacks.  Plug a cord from send to return and see if that wakes the amp up.


Ball up your fist and whack the top of the amp, does that affect the sound?   That exposes loose connections.