Hello Grant

I get static only when I turn the feedback knobs.  I know it's not much help, but maybe it has something to do with the feedback adjustment.  I would like to know, if you find out from Steve, what is causing it.

Chris

I havn't had much opportunity to play with it in the meantime though I'm going to give it a through going over this weekend.....  I'll report back on what I discover.....

Cheers
Grant

Don't overlook a bad solder joint.

1. The first thing you should do is replace all the tubes with new ones.
2. Take the amp to a friends house and try it out there with a different source, preamp, and speakers.
3. Open the TABOO and place a tempororay jumper wire accross the volume pot to essentially bypass it (full volume)
and use a preamp or some source with a volume control. If the noise is gone, the volume pot in the TABOO is bad.
4. Send it to Decware for diagnosis

When I sent mine back to Steve I specifically asked him to check for a bad solder joint. As I said, he found nothing wrong with any part of the Taboo so he sent me another one....same issue.

Grant I'd love to know what the solution is...keep us posted!

I have a possible explanation.  Possible because I have not been able to reproduce what you guys are talking about in over 2 months of trying...

The Taboo was named such because it twists the rules pretty hard when it comes to conventional amplifier design.

The Taboo has outputs and a feedback network that float above ground.  This means the output/feedback network are always in a constant search mode for ground.  That means that speaker wires can become somewhat of an antenna.  Changing speakers wires could effect the problem you describe.

If you ground the negative or positive speaker post to the chassis in any way, you would hear the amp get 3 times louder and then most likely fall flat on it's face.  With this in mind, I can see where having speaker cables on the floor could induce static from the carpet into the feedback network.

I can also see where certain loudspeakers could even change this.  You might try changing the loudspeaker(s) the next time it happens and see if it goes away.  Another thing that you could try is to turn off the amp for a few minutes and then turn it back on, sort of like a reboot.  

I would say with this amp it is probably more important then most to have the speaker connections completely tight and clean at all times, same thing at the amp.

just wanted to let folks know that steve was right on(obviously, and at least in my case) with his diagnosis. last night one channel became significantly lower than the other. oh, i own a taboo and a bottlehead foreplay pre. this was on both cd and vinyl. i swapped out tubes and ic's on both units, and then switched speaker cables to rule out speaker problems. could not find the culprit. speaker cables (bare silver ends) were tightly bolted down on the taboo. i then ruled out the foreplay when i ran the cd straight through the taboo and the problem persisted. i was just about to disconnect everything to either send the taboo back, or bring it in to a local tech when i read steve's post. i noticed that i had experienced a pretty dramatic increase in volume, so i slowly started to twist the left black speaker post, and immedetely the lost sound was recovered. this was not a case of the connection being loose. this seemed to be more of a grounding issue. in any event, if you own a taboo and your sound gets comprimised in any way, i would recommend you re reead steve's post and make sure all those connections are good. and even if they seem to be, keep fiddling with them.