NGD / Gear Necromancy

[Byron Dickens]

Yesterday, I made a pilgrimage to Southpaw Guitars. For a long time I had been back and forth about wanting a hollow or semi-hollow body guitar and I finally decided to pull the trigger.

 

 

The same day, I got a call that the repair on my amp was complete.

 

It was a happy day.

 

 

Yes, I plugged that guitar into that amp.

Yes, I am using a power attenuator.

 

Time to bust out some Ted Nugent riffs.

[Grem]

Nice score. Like that "weathered" look.

[Bapu]

"She's A Beauty" ~Fee Waybill & The Tubes

[57Gregy]

"One in a million."

[craigb]

Everyone loves New Gear Day! ?

[Byron Dickens]

The amp is the necromancy part.  I bought it a looooooong time ago at a pawn shop for something like $350. This was back before ebay and back when you could still haggle with them.

I think it had problems back then; I was disappointed because it didn't quite sound right.  It didn't have that high gain JCM 800 roar I was thinking of. I thought I had the wrong Marshall.

Life happened, I joined the Army and the amp just got stored.

Fast forward and my Line 6 pedalboard takes a crap, will cost more to fix than it is worth and I decide to go back to real amps.

As I am also in the process of clearing out stuff I don't use I thought I would sell the head. But when I pulled it out and tried it, it was dead. I decided to see if I could fix it. In the course of researching it, I found out what this amp really is! 

The JMP MK II Master Lead is the same circuit as the early JCM 800!

I found a dead output transformer and so I replaced it and the missing impedance selector.  Now I got sound out of it but the output was extremely low. Like I could dime it out and still talk over it .  Still encouraging though because now there were signs of life.  I replaced the tubes and the 40 year old capacitors because if nothing else, they needed to be done anyway and hoped for the best.

Not much changed.

By this time I knew I needed professional help. Even though I was really good with electrical and electronics in my former life as a mechanic, in the automotive field we treat everything as a black box.

So, off to the repair shop where they ended up having to replace some resistors on the board.

In the meantime, I found a 1x12 with a Celestion Vintage 30 on Craigslist for $100! It was a sign from God. I called and went to pick it up the next day. I also ordered the power attenuator.

 

 

 

I am currently in Tone Heaven. Too bad I have to pause occasionally for interruptions like eating, sleeping and work.

[Byron Dickens]

On 11/3/2022 at 5:42 PM, Grem said:

Nice score. Like that "weathered" look.

It is really just a plain satin finish.

It seems like Ibanez put most of the effort into making a solid, functional instrument rather than dressing them up.