stefvorcide":3t0bd71r said:
Btw do you have other cool stories like "kirk hammett's much much $ for your marshall mod" ?
Ok, here we go, but let me make a long story short:
It's already been back in November of 1992, as I've tried to presentate James Hetfield a completely rebuilt Marshall at the time, as Metallica had two shows here in Nuremberg on their Black Album's tour, but Zak Harman (the stage manager) told me, that first he's going to check out the amp - and only when the amp is convincingly, then he'll go to look for James. He tried the amp...
But then he couldn't find James and came back with Kirk Hammet. Kirk at first watched me suspiciously, then played my amp - and just two minutes later he closed the volume on his guitar, watched me with an astonished face and asked me only two words: "How much?"
Just 20 minutes later I've got my cash at the tour office.
The amp was an early '68 Marshall 1959SLP with a toasted PT & choke before, which I've completely disassembled, moved the OT a bit away from the PT, to get space for two chassis mount filter cap cans and the choke in between. After some punches in the chassis on top for additional preamp tube sockets aso. and on front & back for additional pots, the newer mains & output selectors aso. the chassis was new zinc plated and the amp then rebuilt to a 3-channel head w/ effects loop, keeping the orig. OT just w/ new end bells and a new PT & choke:
Here a guts shot from inside, where on an additional board you can see the diodes & electrolytics for the DC heater supply. And you can see, that back at this time I still haven't built the amp's circuit on eyelet boards like today, but on double solder strips:
Still another gut shot. The PT got an additional end bell from inside, to keep its magnetic stray field small inside the amp:
I've made new front & back panels from brushed 1/16" thick aluminum - 'champagner' anodized - silkscreened, to not have messy drilled original front & back panels on this amp:
The vinyl of the head case was in an awful condition, as I got the dead amp, so I've stripped it completely, removed the glue from the wood (a painful work with the glue Marshall is using
... so painful, that after all this I haven't had energy left over, to still put a new vinyl on it. So I've simply painted it black and put a new handle and a set of the JCM800 amp feet on it. Here's the amp already in ownership of Metallica, below the stage in Frankenhalle/Nuremberg:
The abrasions you can see on the front edge came from already being on tour with Jon Schaffer/Iced Earth in summer of 1992 (the very first IE tour here in Europe), a few months before it went into the hands of Kirk Hammet.
Years later Kirk told me, that my/his amp is still his favorite in his studio at home and that they'd used this amp among others at the Load and ReLoad albums, but couldn't mention this because their Mesa endorsement at that time. Maybe it's also been used on some later albums, but can't say something about this, because at the end of the 90' I lost my contact to Kirk. I haven't had email at that time, he settled to another place, the phone number I've had from him didn't work anymore...
And sorry for the blurry photos! But at that time I've only had a cheap-o pocket cam - so only could make scans of low quality pics.
Larry
