Amp overheating and cutting out

It's normal for an amp to get warm as you play, but if yours gets genuinely hot to the touch and then cuts out or shuts down, that's the internal thermal protection kicking in — the amp shuts itself down to cool off. It shouldn't be a recurring thing, so the real question is what's making it overheat. Usually it's the environment or something external. Here's how to track it down: - Check your cabinet. If you're running a multi-speaker cab, a dead speaker can change the amp's load and cause heating. Run the amp with identical settings through a different speaker or cab to see if the issue follows. - Use the correct speaker jack. Many of our amps have two jacks marked for different impedances. Connecting a single 8-ohm load to the 4-ohm jack doubles the output power — and doubles the strain, which can lead to overheating, shutdown, or a blown speaker. For a 16-ohm cab, use the 8-ohm jack and turn the Master down. For two 8-ohm cabs, use both jacks to split the output evenly. - Check your cables. Amps should connect to speakers with a speaker cable, not an instrument cable. An instrument cable can make the amp misbehave and overheat — swap it out. - Check your instrument and pedals. A hot signal from high-gain pickups or pedals can push the amp hard. Try running without pedals in the FX loop or input, try a different instrument, and try the amp with nothing plugged in at all. - Try a different environment. A humid basement or a hot outdoor gig heats an amp faster. Test somewhere cooler — and when you must play somewhere warm, a fan next to the amp helps. > Warm vs. hot: It's normal for an amp to be comfortably warm (around body temperature) while playing — no concern there. Only when it's hot enough to be uncomfortable to touch is there a real problem worth troubleshooting. Please run through all of this before sending an amp in — most units we get back for this turn out to have no fault at all.