Stumped my Guitar tech

[corpse]

My guitar tech owns a 2003 RI 45- I have 1996 RI. It was making a fizzing sound as the note decayed, and one of the tubes (EL34's) had a loose flake in it (hmm- perhaps like the owner)- so he replaced them. He was comfortable doing some basic work as he does his own and his sounds great. In biasing the amp though the highest he was able to get was about 26mA- he then flipped her over and noted she has seen extensive reword- a number of the resistors were repositioned and one was gone altogether. I am sending it on for further (more experienced) tech work, but what might cause the bias to be so low? I just would like to have some idea what is going on- I have never had to have any work done on it, and was always of the impression it was pretty stock other than the tubes as it tended to be "bright".
Can someone shine some light on this?
Thanks
Jim

[demonufo]

Perhaps you should consider taking it to somebody else!
It's more than likely quite simply that the bias resistor is not the right value. Perhaps your amp was previously not set up for EL34's.

[Flames1950]

Even if it had been previously set up for EL34's, one set may not bias exactly like the next set (no matter what Groove Tubes tried to say about their rating system even!!!) Just not that unusual..........

[corpse]

But 26mA?

[jcmjmp]

But 26mA?

I bought a set of EL34s once and they had a low matching number (from the tube store). I could not get them in range without a resistor change ( which was non-original anyways).

[gutpile]

Not unusual at all! It is usually a 50/50 chance I will have to change resistors in order to bias it in when changing tubes...

[thousandshirts]

"Are you smarter than a Guitar Tech 5th Grader?"