Volume drops, scratchy tone, or cutting out? Start here

This is the number-one call amp makers get — not just us. The volume keeps dropping, the tone's scratchy or muddy, the signal cuts in and out. Here's the reassuring part: it's very rarely the amplifier itself. Work through these and you'll almost always find the culprit. - Check your instrument. Intermittent volume drops usually come from flaky connections inside the guitar's electronics. Active pickups? A dying battery can cause this too. Assume the guitar is the problem until you've proven it isn't. - Check every cable. Gently wiggle each cable where the housing meets the plug, working from the guitar all the way to the amp. Swap in a known-good cable. Bad cables are behind a huge share of these issues — if you're sure it's not the cable, check again. - Check your pedals. Test every connecting cable on both sides, and pull pedals out of the chain one at a time, starting with the one nearest the amp. - Check the speaker cable. Wiggle the soft plastic where it meets the connector, and swap it for another speaker cable. - Check the speaker. Try the amp through a different speaker — these symptoms can come from a speaker on its way out. - Check the FX loop. If your amp has one, run a known-good cable from FX Send to FX Return, rotating the plugs a few times to knock off any corrosion. Remember, an amp only amplifies the signal it's given. If your sound suddenly drops, there's simply less signal reaching the amp — which usually means the amp is working fine and something upstream is the issue. Please work through all of this before sending an amp in; we can't count how many arrive for repair with nothing actually wrong.