Q: I own a Fender Twin Reverb Reissue amp, which I love. But lately, I'm not hearing that spacious spring reverb sound. In fact, I now have to crank it all the way up to hear any reverb at all. Is the unit defective?

A: It's not impossible, but rather unlikely that the reverb tank, which is built like, well, a tank, has suddenly gone bad. The first thing we'd suggest is to be sure your send and return RCA cables are properly connected. If you've done any work (or maybe just cleaned the amp), the send and return cables may have become swapped out or come loose. While checking them, it wouldn't hurt to spray a little contact cleaner on each connector. If these are okay, set your amplifier volume fairly low, turn up the reverb, and then shake it to get that distinctive reverb "crash." If it sounds quite loud, the problem is most likely in the reverb drive components. You should make sure the 12AT7 drive tube, which is typically the third tube from the right when viewing the amp from the rear, is firmly seated. If it is, you could try swapping it out with a new one. Beyond this, you're dealing with things like a bad reverb drive transformer or some other internal component.

WARNING: There are voltages inside guitar amps that can kill you, so please be very careful, or leave this to the experts, like Sweetwater's crackerjack service department!