Hi There, and greetings from Norway!

I have a reference 500 that i have owned for 30 years. It just started to act weird. The volume of the clean channel is significant louder than gain, no matter how i use the eq. It's just louder. Not much but enough to make a noticeable drop in volume when going from clean to gain and a volume boost when going from gain to clean.
To remedy this i programmed my patches / channels so that the volume on the gain channels is set to 10 and the volume on the clean channels are set to 6 to compensate for the difference in loudness. I could probably live with that solution as a workaround. However when i go from gain (preamp volume 10) to clean (preamp volume 6), the clean channel gives me 0.5 seconds of preamp volume 10 before it settles at the programmed level (preamp volume 6).
In other words when going from gain to clean i get half a second volume boost before where the preamp delivers max volume.

The preamp volume has also started to malfunction. If i lower the volume from 10-0 sometimes it gets stuck (does not respond when rotating the know) until i hear a click (relay?). I hope to find a solution to the problem however i do not read schematics very well, so i am a bit lost here. I suspect a bad caps or perhaps just a faulty pre-amp valve?

Lately the amp has sounded a bit harsh in the clean and there was a very low fuzz like buzzing under the smooth distortion when engaging the gain, So about a month ago i replaced the suspended V1 valve with a NOS mullard ECC83. The amp responded nicely to the mullard, however i do not know it the valve was the reason for it sounding better or if it was me cleaning out the sockets as the same time i had the hood open.

Any ideas?

Best regards

Jan9

Hei Jan.
Så din post om din Reference 500, på tube-town.
Jeg har 2 Reference 500 her, med lignende problemer. Ser ikke ut til at noen av oss får mye respons på tube-town dessverre.
Fant du ut mer om din forsterker?
Har du funnet noen som klarte å fikse det?
Det er fint å finne riktig person med en gang.
Hvor i Norge er du? Jeg er i Østfold.
Ring meg gjerne på 92800890, eller kontakt meg via nett.
Vennlig hilsen
Kay Irgens