Why does my JC120 smell bad?

[ChetMagongalo]

Whenever I play my JC loudly it starts to emit this kind of hot smell. Like burnt hair and popcorn. Should I be worried? What should I do?

[D.o.S.]

Your riff-awesomeness to volume levels are skewed.

Duh.

[friendship]

[ChetMagongalo]

Your riff-awesomeness to volume levels are skewed.

Duh.

Does that mean I need to play more notes?

[D.o.S.]

MORE NOTES FASTER HIGHER UP THE NECK

[rfurtkamp]

Could be dust etc or just the smell it's putting off.

Different amps smell differently, not as in different makes do, but individual specific amps.

Dust, mildew, animal shit, piss, etc.

If it's not sounding different and just a reaction to a certain level of playing, I wouldn't worry about it much. Can take the chassis out and hit it with some canned air (when it's cooled down and powered down) to see if that helps.

The worst I've ever experienced was a Dual Showman head that some cat or small animal had grounded itself out on the transformer/caps on and cooked. I got tasked with cleaning that out because I was 'the guy' for weird shit.

That amp would never smell good again once it got to temperature, I would have just dropped it in the trash.

[ChetMagongalo]

How do I know if it's like overheating or something? That's mainly what I was worried about. I was afraid the bad smell meant there was something wrong the amp.

[rfurtkamp]

You can usually tell if performance suffers, volume drops, etc.

The things will run hot, especially when they get older.

That said, they just don't die.

It takes real work to blow one up.

[friendship]

Could be dust etc or just the smell it's putting off.

Different amps smell differently, not as in different makes do, but individual specific amps.

Dust, mildew, animal shit, piss, etc.

If it's not sounding different and just a reaction to a certain level of playing, I wouldn't worry about it much. Can take the chassis out and hit it with some canned air (when it's cooled down and powered down) to see if that helps.

The worst I've ever experienced was a Dual Showman head that some cat or small animal had grounded itself out on the transformer/caps on and cooked. I got tasked with cleaning that out because I was 'the guy' for weird shit.

That amp would never smell good again once it got to temperature, I would have just dropped it in the trash.

On the other hand, maybe heating up those tubes summoned the ghost of the dead animal to ass death energy to your riffs.

[rfurtkamp]

If it had been mine, I'd just have tossed it in the first place.

Things you repair when you're 'that guy' in your circle of friends.

Makes me glad my vision isn't good enough to do most soldering these days!

[retinal orbita]

Probably you're not using the neck pickup enough

[tuffteef]

get that amp a cig and some iced tea

[weed_killer]

that's funny, cause my jc has a strange smell at higher volumes, similar to how you described yours. When I keep the volume at a normal/bedroom level though, it's not there. How old is yours?

[Hyphen Nation]

blame the drummer…or the bassist…or the cat…in my experience it's usually a fluid based origin in odd amp smells.

[skullservant]

Might be a tendency of older amps. When I had my Sunn Sceptre it smelled weird when it was powered up. Also this PA100 smells a little when it powers up too. Probably just heat being applied to years of stuff all over various parts of the amp. As echoed before you'd probably be able to tell if something was wrong with it internally