I bought serial number 4318 off ebay not too long ago, and the unit sounds great. The tubes needed to me changed but I guess that's a good thing in Tube Land.
Anyhow, the EQ knobs seem to be mislabeled/missoldered. The Bass knob on both channels affects mids, and the Mid knob affects bass. Also, the B channel is about equal in volume to the number 2 input of the A channel. Is it supposed to be voiced that way? Can anyone help with information or troubleshooting tips?
Thanks,
Justin
The controls are interactive, and so changing the bass setting will change the mids and treble. There is always the influence to get a nice EQ smile just like the tradifiton Fender circuits the F-2B is based on. Start out at 2-10-2 (bass-middle-treble) as the closest thing to flat. These numbers describe the labels on the dial, not on a clockface.
The channels are identical. If the settings are the same on each channel, using input 2 on either should be the same volume.
As for the tubes, what sound are you noticing that indicates the tubes need changing? There's a couple of entries in the for the F-2B that you might find useful as well.
The tubes that came with it were sovtec. I replaced them with telefunken, groove tube, and tesla tubes. This was just a matter of taste.
On mine, both channels are not identical. We just tested them with matched Telefunken tubes, and channel B is noticeably quieter.
What I meant about the EQ is, when sweeping the bass knob, mostly mids are changed: when sweeping the mid knob, basses are the mostly changed. This happens on both channels.
As far as age, this has the teal/black casing with the aluminum knobs mentioned in the FAQ, and Santa Rosa, CA is the city on the back.
Taking great care to only touch the capacitors, wiggle the 6 orange capacitors on the circuit board and see if it changes. Strangely, we just repaired an F-2B where Tony had the same observation - the bass control seems like the mid control. We found these caps were clipped short before soldering, and therefore did not make a good connection.
If you find they are loose and want to resolder them, unplug the F-2B and wait 5 minutes before working on it.
If you feel uncomfortable about testing this (I can understand - high voltage is dangerous), we'll be happy to test it for you no charge.
Hi Justin,
Have you tried this to see if there is something funky with your preamp?
No I haven't had time to look at it yet. I can get it to work and the sound is suitable, but I would like to take a better look at it soon and ask for more details regarding what I'll need to resolder/fix