My awesome JCM900 head died. It's the 4500 with 5881 Valves and it sounded supreme.
It just died. My local guitar shop wants ?40 an hour to look at and fix it.
But, Marshall said if I drive up, they'll fix it while I wait, for ?25 +vat per hour....
So I'm gonna take a road trip up to Milton Keynes.
Ah well.
On a good note... the Marshall engineer I spoke to was fucking helpful
UPDATE:Ok! So... I drove three hours to get to the Marshall building in Milton Keynes...
Here's me standing the opposite side of the road after going to IKEA for 95p full English breakfast!
We get up close.... where ... you can see a Mercedez Jeep type car ... The licence plate was JCM 800
Pure genius.
I couldn't get any pics inside... I tried... but they didn't come out!!! GRR! Still... the reception area of the building is insane ... it's lovely. All Marshall memorabilia etc... great stuff. Didn't get a tour ... when I dropped the amp into Customer Repairs... the girl gave me a frosty reception which I was dissapointed about ... She was obviously annoyed that I was late by an hour ... traffic was insane... I didnt' expect it. They basically said "come back at 1:15 and we'll maybe have a quote for you" .... I went away and sat and got real angry. So I walked back in and said I'd driven a long way because they said it would be much better for me to do that ... and that I wasn't happy that all I'd be recieving was a quote... She then told me they'd look at my amp in 15 mins! So ... within the hour I had a phone call (I'd gone out to spend some time with Perrie in the surrounding area), saying it would be ?59 including parts and labour ... some broken joint in the amp, a fucked preamp tube... some replacement parts... all new pots etc. ... So, that was fine... they'd have it all done by 2pm.
2pm rolled around and I strolled in ... the engineer (a great help and really nice guy) came out... plugged me a Gibson Les Paul in ... explained what they'd done ... told me that I could crank the fuck out of my amp if I wanted ... so I did
LOL... in an office! LOL! Sounded great. I then asked some technical questions and he stood talking to me for 15 mins about it....
He went away for me to have a jam around on my amp and he came back and talked some more
The engineering room is TINY. It's a small office area with two desks ... one for a guy and one for a girl who work there as the 'sales' side of the repairs... and then a waiting room where they basically sit all the amps that are in for repair... there were old JTM30's ... JCM800s... JCM900s.... one REALLY old Marshall... I mean... REALLY old ... signed by Jim Marshall that a customer had sent in for repair.
Then the engineering room itself was a box room. 4 or so guys messing with electronics in the room... closed door.
ANYWAYS ....
The end result is that I now have my Marshall... fully serviced, running at it's best... sounding awesome ... and they even gave it a clean off for me!
YAY!
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