full service repair for guitar AND bass amplifiers

Here’s one you don’t see every day. Unless you’re Neil Young’s guitar tech, and then you see five. This old Conn Strobotuner ST-11 came in with a blown fuse, leaky cap, and busted power switch.

The Fender Blues Junior. People snapped these up as either a light weight back up, or in many cases as their very first guitar amp.

The fact that this amp makes sound at all is a miracle. In many ways it would have been easier to build an amp from scratch.

Everything you’ve ever heard about the old Sunn Model T amps is true. Believe the hype 100 percent. It’s absolutley elegant in its simplicity, rock solid in construction, and brutal in sonic output.

This beast had spent a few years in storage and needed a good cleaning and a new set of tubes. The screen resistors were toast and the only HT fuse still working (there’s 3) was a 10 amp car fuse.

Not every repair ends in the velvety sheet cake of success that I’ve become accustomed to. Mopsey’s Korg/Marshall era Vox AC306/tb came to me with a serious case of the snap, crackle, pops. My wife plays exactly this same amp, so I cranked up the overconfidence knob and acted like I knew what I was doing.

These old Sovtek Mig50s have the somewhat cliched reputation of being "built like a tank." And for the most part, that's true.

Once back together, the brutal punch from the Trace cab was a pleasant reminder of my bass adventures in the mid '90s. Too bad it weighs about 6000 pounds!

A fine example of just one of the many "interesting" choices made in the 1970s, we present the Univox 1011 in all it's glittery blue glory.

Not sure what happened this week, but I've become the half-way house for wayward effect pedals.

A super cool MXR Distortion II from way back when. When what? When pedals were held together with 8 big old screws and had their own 120v cables, that's when.

Two fun repairs on some gear from Electro-Harmonix.

After huffing only a small amount of paint thinner (this is another lie, I'm out of paint thinner, do you have any?) the original black case revealed itself.

I get to see a ton of cool gear, but this one is pretty special. A real-deal 1964 pre-CBS Fender VibroVerb with the original speaker and tubes.

I tend to forget that once upon a time "Solid State" meant "State of the Art."

Don't take anything for granted, and make sure that even your mistakes are valuable. 

The clean and dirty channels sounded just like I thought they would, but I was surprised by the absolutely cavernous reverb.

This 1979 HiWatt DR504 was actually a lot of fun.

Here's one you don't see every day. An Engl Straight 100 from Germany... with a schematic from Germany.... in German.

As hard as we might try, and as much as they might deserve it, some amps refuse to die.

Bad pots, broken switches, new jacks, and my personal favorite.... items sold as "new" from a major big box store that show obvious signs of previous repairs.  Fun times!

A warm thank you goes out to its builder for trying to hide the details of the design with hot glue and a chunk of cardboard.

When the ladies in Whorechata travel they need to look as good as they sound.

The pick up selector on this PRS Starla came apart like an indy car doing summersaults down the straightaway.

From everything I've read online there's a million ways to fry the little digital brain that makes your Whammy do what it does.

I don't typically work on guitars, but appearing to have been simultaneously on fire and under water, this old P-bass copy presented a worthwhile challenge.