frying eggs and popping corn

[nyazzip]

i've been getting some fried egg/snap cracle pop/ fade out/ total blackout behavior from a guitar amp i have, a newish model amp, not some vintage thing. i had all sorts of doom and gloom scenarios going on in my head, especially since the trouble started soon after i "modded it" quite a bit, mostly different resistor values. i also blamed the fender (tube)reverb unit i was using with it.
turns out it was just dirty/ bad output tube socket connections in the amp. i don't know why they would be so corroded but apparently they were
i have a new respect for plated pins/sockets, although i understand the gold probably scrapes off the first time you use em