I just had a magic smoke release. Not the best thing to happen, I guess, relatively.
After it cooled off a bit I looked under the hood. I have the speedball kit, and for whatever reason I upgraded a couple caps with big Mundorfs that I hung there with sticky pads and zip ties. It seems that one of the sticky pads released and the un-shrink wrapped lead grounded out against the heat sink on the speedball. Much smoke and loss of sound ensued.
More unfortunately, I blamed a poorly timed accidental step upon the headphone cord at precisely the same time as the failure as the culprit. So instead of immediately turning off the amp, I went and dug out another set of headphones to try, assuming I had damaged the cord.
So the damage to the crack might be deep and serious. What do I check first? I'm confident that with the help of the forum and with patience I can fix it, but I have no clue where to start.
Thank you
rm