I don't buy gear unless it is a good deal. I have only paid more than $300 for one guitar I have ever owned, and this was my 1988 '67-style Gibson Flying V, which cost me $525 brand new.
Have never paid over $300 for a guitar amp either.
So today, I was checking out craigslist on my lunch break.
Saw an ad.....a guy was selling this for five bucks:
I emailed him, he lived close to where I work. By the end of my shift he had emailed me his phone number. I called him, went to his house, gave up 5 clams.
He had got it at a garage sale for 5 bucks and just wanted to get his money back. It had no power cable, and the master volume pot was completely frozen. Oh and it was missing two knobs.
Brought it home. Got some contact cleaner and a pair of pliers. Got the master volume pot working in no time. These amps have shitty pots, and there is a common problem with lotsa crackling from them.
Both preamp gains crackled like a motherfucker. Just kept working on them with contact cleaner and turning them back and forth. Eliminated all the crackling. Of course I had a spare AC cord, same kind as all you guys have to plug in your desktop PCs (standard AC cord these days).
As you can see the tolex and grill cloth are a bit grungy, and so I can do a little cleaning.
I got in my parts toolbox where I had some Marshall set-screw knobs, and put two of them on, as you can see, for a temporary thang. I am going to get some actual Marshall press-on knobs (original knobs are press-on), and it will look 'cooler'.
Fucked around on it with my Ibanez Tube Screamer (original TS-9) and one of my neck-thru-body JB Player Strats.
Little amp really rocks! Might make one of those good recording amps....you know, when you record a little amp, but crank the bitch until it begs for mercy, it can sound really great.
Doing some research on it, there are a lot of people who mod them, adding a reverb chip to convert it to a model G10R. Saw one guy talking about a tube conversion he had done to one, lol.
I am not going to bother modding it. These go on ebay for 40-50 bucks used in good working condition.
Not a bad deal for five bucks, though.
Maybe someday I will post about finding another good deal on a real Marshall tube head, but what the fuck. I had five bucks, and I don't mind having another little amp around the house. This one is now amp number 4.
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