James Lugo":w848l3wo said:
The other thing I wanted to tell you guys was I gave the amp to Dave and let him do his thing. I didn't tell him what to do he just knew I wanted something different from my '71. Not very often in life you can just hand off something like this and just tell a person do your thing and it comes back beyond your wildest dreams.
I know you can call it the Marsha Plus...
I did that today, myself. I had some other business with Dave and dropped off a Metro JTM 50 (or whatever variant the seller said it was) for him to go through. I got this amp fairly reasonably priced, and after I got it I found out why...snap, crackle, pop. Changed the preamp tubes, which helped but it still had noise/buzzy issues.
So I just said "F**K IT!" and took it to Dave. He looked at it, asked me what it's issues were, and I told him. He asked me what I wanted out of it. I just told him "Make it sound like something you'd keep. If that doesn't work out, how about changing out the trannies/parts/etc and just make it a 50w Marsha?"
He replied "When do you need it?"
I told him no rush, get to it when you can.
Dave said "Just make it sound like something?"
I said yes. It's nice when you leave it in the guru's hands, that way you get back something he would be associated with. If you have specific tone goals, mention them, of course, and be prepared to pay for it.
But if you go in with trust, usually you get back something better than if you tell the guru what you'd like. Frankly I have so many Marshall variants now (JTM 45, two 50w Metro Plexis/Mercury iron, 71 JMP 50w, 71 SL 100w, etc, etc) that I'm content to let Dave come up with something, since he's heard all of my other amps.
So I'm with James on this one. And James, thanks for the tour around the studio today...much nicer than the old digs!