pot problem Torque bass amp

[milli0ne]

Hi everybody

I really hope there's someone here who can help me.

I've got some problems with my Torque 30w bass amp. The pots were scratchy so i decided on replacing the gain and volume pots only.

I've ordered pcb 3 pin pots. But the original pots are 5 pins (some kind of extra casing for stability?).
First i replaced the volume pot, amp worked perfectly. Then I replaced the gain pot. I turned it on and i heard a loud 'pop' , and suddenly it's a radio. It was picking up radiosignals pretty hard. There was no signal coming through from my guitar whatsoever.

When I play a note hard on my bass i hear a loud distorted tone. If i play soft there's nothing.

So what's wrong here?   If anybody could give me just the smallest help i'd be very graitful

thx!!! marco.

[joecool85]

Wild guess, but it sounds like the gain pot you put in is defective.

[milli0ne]

it doesn't do anything at all.. when i turn it all the way up there's no change in gain :s .. just like you say  
the pots are brand new :s

i'll replace it tomorrow and see if it works..

thx for your reply

[J M Fahey]

Check that the new pot was correctly soldered (sometimes the solder goes *around* the pot pin without being actually soldered to it),  check that some solder blob isn't shorting something it shouldn't, and last but not least, sometimes a PCB track (specially the thin/skinny ones) get cracked about 1mm from the actual soldered pad: in that case scratch carefully the (usually green or blue) solder mask and solder a tiny piece of wire to repair it. Good luck.

[Enzo]

Let me understand, you are putting 3-leg pots in where 5-leg pots belong?  And it doesn't work?

COuld be a defective pot, could be it is not appropriate for that pc board layout, could be a solder issue, could be damaged copper traces from installation.  If nothing else you can stick the old scratchy pot back in to make sure the rest of the amp is OK.

[Jack1962]

It's a bad pot , if you can half #$% solder it's pretty hard to incorrectly solder in a pot.

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