The Tone Technician

01/11/2024

Crumbling 120v American unsafe 65yr old rubber flex, no safe earth connection on chassis, fused not in line but on neutral. All bad. Flex replaced, mains supply rewired and reconfigured so fuse in the line conductor, THEN the power switch. 100% safe Earth tag secured through existing hole in chassis with nut, bolt locking nut and washers. Now it’s safe, I can check the rest of the amp circuit 😊

01/11/2024

21/05/2024

Update on last post… this is going to be a b**ch to work on 😬

21/05/2024

Burning the midnight oil with this beauty this evening. Not many of these about - really nice to have it in the workshop 😎

06/04/2024

Honoured to have this next in the workshop… can’t wait to start work servicing this beauty (£6k+ to you and me IF you can find one brand new). Nothing wrong reported, check bias, a few measurements and should be good to go 😊

06/04/2024

Service and revalve of another Friedman Small Box 50 head. These amps are VERY well made and built to last the rigours of touring. New valves from Derek and team - matched pair of Marshall branded EL34s, a balanced ECC83 in the inverter and two HARMA drive tested ECC83s in the pre amp. Once fitted and biased, this monster came alive. Like “so good I have to get one NOW” kind of good 👍

01/03/2024

Converting a reissue deluxe reverb to hand-wired. Gutting and rebuilding. This one’s going to be fun 🤩

19/02/2024

Sometimes one has to admit defeat 😭😭

30/01/2024

Ready for collection… sweet as a nut

(To be fair, turns out it was only a foot switch fault. Once that was fixed, the amp itself was perfect. Check over but no additional work needed)

26/01/2024

Nice Mesa Lone Star combo powered with EL84s fixed and heading out soon. Bad connection in foot switch cable caused problems beyond channel switching. But of careful soldering and we’re back in business. Internal checks all good and amp sounds lush. Love the variety of gear coming in atm - this is a great bit of kit. Damned heavy tho 👊

23/12/2023

So, after re-securing a completely loose toroidal transformer in an Ampeg bass amp, it instantly becomes more reliable. Then sounds like this… (sorry for the equally loose timing on my jamming with a looper. Got a bad head cold. This cheered me right up tho 😊😊 , I’m looking forward to hearing this monster working its socks off on stage in Bristol next Thursday 🤟