Question about amp issue: tubes? speakers? other?

[Vermoulian]

I'm having an issue with an amp and I'm not sure what's causing it. What happens is, when I play a guitar through the amp, even if it is set completely clean, underneath the regular signal coming out of the speakers is a very faint distorted version. The clean signal is clean---it's not that the main signal is distorted---it's like the signal has been split and one part distorted but mixed back in very faintly.

I seem to recall hearing this before now but I don't recall exactly when and I don't think I ever knew what the issue was. The most likely culprits would seem to be either a bad speaker or a tube, but I don't know for sure. The amp in question is a Top Hat Club Royale, but an old one that I got used and I don't know what it's life was like before I had it.

 

[Burning Fingers]

Ghost notes....most likely due to filter or coupling capacitor(s) that needing replacing.

 

[VintageSG]

Is it an amp with a phase splitter?, if one half of a splitter ( LTP ) is failing, you may get that, other than that, caps. It's usually caps, except when it isn't.

 

[Wally]

Ime, it is helpful to give the make and model of amp as well as any work that has or has not been done…especially if it is an older amp.
to the problem…it could be any one of several things….bad tube, dirty tube socket/pin connections, bad solder joint, bad connection on a cable…speaker cable, reverb cable. Or…a bad speaker, piece of trash between the speaker cone and the frame. Hey, I once found a small blob of solder under the dust cover of a speaker in a brand new amp. I had to pull the speaker to find out exactly what was going on, but holding the speaker with the cone facing the floor and moving the speaker around revealed that there was some there there. I put a slit in the dust cover, got the solder blob out, and did a simple repair on the dust cover.
lots of things cause noises that fit the general description of what you have there….

 

[Wally]

It could even be the grille cloth buzzing. Yep, I found that once. I used a heat gun to shrink the cloth…Voila! The buzz went away. Loose nots or screws.