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Old 18th Mar 2014, 4:50 pm   #1
ITAM805
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Default A once in a lifetime find

As the title says, once in a lifetime we come across finds like this.

I do the odd repair for a music shop in the town, and recently I was asked to check over an old Marshall PA, that had 2 of its 4 channels modified for guitar and bass. When I set about pulling the chassis I first noticed that the back panel was cream coloured, not the usual gold of the classic Marshall's that I've either owned as a guitarist (such as my 1968 'plexi') or had repaired as a tech?

When I opened it up I was struck by something even stranger - it had 2 output transformers! After a bit of Googling I found various fora that mentioned this odd configuration. It appears that Ken Bran and Dudley Craven, the brains behind the Marshall sound, had struggled to source an output transformer able to cope with the 100w that Pete Townsend and others at the time wanted, and so they lashed two JTM45 "Bluesbreaker" tx's together as stopgap. Also I noted it sported KT66's instead of the usual EL34's and probably what were the original quad of Mullard yellow labelled ECC83's?

With this info, I called the shop owner and told him that I suspected that this was a very rare amp and he in turn called the amp's owner, a private collector, unaware of it's rarity, suggesting that it would be useful to post my pictures of the chassis on Marshall's own user forum, which he did. Well, after a couple of days, the chief tech at Marshall called the shop to say that this was indeed a rarity and invited us up to their HQ as they were intrigued by it. Notwithstanding the 130 mile schlep from Folkestone to Milton Keynes, we jumped at the offer and headed north yesterday morning!

When we arrived, the head tech took the beastie into their workshop and we peered through the window like kids with no money outside a sweetshop. After 15 minutes or so he eventually came back out with the chassis and told us what was wrong with it and so on.

But here's the nub of this tale, the "antiques road show" moment. He said that other than a fake (twin o/p tx) chassis that someone had knocked together, that no-one at Marshall had only ever seen one aside from photographs.They said that Jim Marshall himself had probably made the aluminium chassis around 1966. He said it's value will be greatly increased if it turned out to have belonged to a 'name' but even so, due to it's rarity and original condition it should be insured for around £50,000 and that at auction we might expect it to fetch something like £30,000+.....
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Old 18th Mar 2014, 5:01 pm   #2
knightley
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Default Re: A once in a life time find

Surely the mains input socket is not original.
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Old 18th Mar 2014, 5:06 pm   #3
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Default Re: A once in a life time find

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Originally Posted by knightley View Post
Surely the mains input socket is not original.
No but we do have the original Bulgin, but it was replaced earlier by another tech. Marshall say it won't affect the value anyway
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Old 18th Mar 2014, 5:07 pm   #4
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Default Re: A once in a life time find

No, thats a typical mod, it would have been a Bulgin originally.
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Old 18th Mar 2014, 5:28 pm   #5
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Default Re: A once in a life time find

I hope you are in for a cut of the selling price!
 
Old 18th Mar 2014, 5:35 pm   #6
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Default Re: A once in a life time find

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I hope you are in for a cut of the selling price!
So do I MM, so do I
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Old 18th Mar 2014, 5:38 pm   #7
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Default Re: A once in a life time find

And I thought some Hi-Fi fetched silly money!
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