Sonzera 20 buzz

[Jim Cerio]

I bought a Sonzera 20 a few weeks ago. Sou ds amazing. So I plug i to it at home 1st day and dial it in. Use it at a gig that night. No problem. It sits for a,seek and I bring out to a gig. Clean channel hums so loud that the sou d guy shuts me off between songs. I have surgery so i dont get a chance to play with it until yesterday. Unbeleivable hum in the clean channel. I try a Humx and gound lift no change. Take it back to the store, no problem. I get a tripp lite iso bar back at my house and it still buzzes. My Blues Junior, my home made plexi dont buzz at all.
Tomorrow since i am still recovering i am bringing my so to carry my blues junior and my Sonzera to like 10 different places and record if it buzzes or not. If it does I am going to want PRS to fix it or refund it.
Anyone else have problems with these amps?

 

[László]

Could be a bad tube, but you should contact PRS customer service. PRS will take care of it. They’re great to deal with.

Incidentally, service issue posts are against the forum rules.

 

[shinksma]

This thread in a parallel sub-forum indicates that a non-zero number of folks have had similar issues, likely with tubes:

https://forums.prsguitars.com/threads/sonzera-20-noise-hiss.24304/

If you can exchange it for another, that might be the best solution. It is possible you just have a loose tube or a dirty contact on the tube, which is why it worked fine at the store, seemingly randomly - the tube happened to be making good contact. So might not need new tubes, just a re-seating.

 

[Jim Cerio]

Could be a bad tube, but you should contact PRS customer service. PRS will take care of it. They’re great to deal with.

Incidentally, service issue posts are against the forum rules.

So far so good. My deelalwr is working with me and I am confident it will be resolved.

 

[Tim foshee]

So far so good. My deelalwr is working with me and I am confident it will be resolved.

Did it get resolved? I have issues with mine as well

 

[Johnnny M]

I have a sonzera 50 and have had it for about a year. Had a tube problem at first but they sent me a new tube and that worked. Now have a wicked buzz in the clean channel. Like another post mentioned, our sound guy has to pull me down in the mix between songs. Any idea which tube does what? V1, V2, V3, V4 ?. I replaced the JJ tube so assume it is one of the others.

 

[László]

I have a sonzera 50 and have had it for about a year. Had a tube problem at first but they sent me a new tube and that worked. Now have a wicked buzz in the clean channel. Like another post mentioned, our sound guy has to pull me down in the mix between songs. Any idea which tube does what? V1, V2, V3, V4 ?. I replaced the JJ tube so assume it is one of the others.

It’s easy to check for a bad preamp tube. Lots of info on the web, and Mesa has tons of troubleshooting info that applies equally well to any tube amp. Just look at one of their manuals.

It takes a tiny bit of patience to proceed methodically, but there’s no magic to it.

 

[Mrcairo46]

I bought a Sonzera 20 a few weeks ago. Sou ds amazing. So I plug i to it at home 1st day and dial it in. Use it at a gig that night. No problem. It sits for a,seek and I bring out to a gig. Clean channel hums so loud that the sou d guy shuts me off between songs. I have surgery so i dont get a chance to play with it until yesterday. Unbeleivable hum in the clean channel. I try a Humx and gound lift no change. Take it back to the store, no problem. I get a tripp lite iso bar back at my house and it still buzzes. My Blues Junior, my home made plexi dont buzz at all.
Tomorrow since i am still recovering i am bringing my so to carry my blues junior and my Sonzera to like 10 different places and record if it buzzes or not. If it does I am going to want PRS to fix it or refund it.
Anyone else have problems with these amps?

Yes I did. I got one of the first Sonzera’s off the Slow boat from China. Noticed a week later a tube shattered. Took it back to dealer to check after I replaced the tube, all ok. 4 months later big hum problems on the clean channel. OD channel fine. Amp went back to PRS for 8 weeks. Returned , worked great, until 4 weeks later big hum only in OD channel. I returned to dealer who made good on it for me.
Few days ago I saw an ad for a Sonzera used, good price. Hopefully this will work.

 

[Michael M]

Bought a Sonzera 50 two years ago and had all kinds of issues almost instantly so returned it but a replacement was back ordered so used a Vox AC 30 for about a year. Nice amp but just not the sound I was looking for so decided to try the Sonzera 50 again. I’ve had it for a year now and seemed good although I really barely used it until recently and here’s what I find. Its hissing and has a bit of a buzz on the clean channel even with the volume less than a quarter of the way up. It’s a bit quieter if you turn the reverb all the way up or down. Reverb anywhere the middle causes more buzzing and that’s inconvenient to say the least. Dirty channel not much better, quite a lot of noise with the volume anywhere above about 20%. You expect some hissing on the dirty channel but at that low volume it seems unacceptable. It was worse than this before but the guys at PRS have been fantastic. They have been trouble shooting it with me pretty much daily and even sent me new tubes which improved it but a few days later and it’s back to how I described it. They offered to have me send it in which is what I think I'm going to do now. Frustrated with it. Love PRS. Best guitars in the world and best customer service too but at this point I’m not really confident in their amps. If this fix doesn’t work, thinking of going to a Fender hot rod deluxe IV. Any one have any thoughts on this?