A real gem of a solid-state amp by Marshall. I mean, when my guitar slinger friend Neil came over and saw that I fix amps (I was rebuilding my Fender Blues Deluxe ’57 reissue at the time) he exclaimed, “Geez, I have this early-eighties Marshall amp that I love but it’s not playable anymore, so I had to go out buy a Traynor. But do you think you can attempt to repair the Marshall?” It turns out this amp was a Marshall 75 Reverb. All solid-state.
“Of course!”
So I end up with this small Marshall amp in the trunk of my car eager to get home as quickly as possible and already planning the first things to check on it.” I already had imagined it disassembled on old newspapers on my dining room table and I wasn’t even halfway home.
It weighed a freaking ton. (about 45 lbs)
Easy Disassembly
Forgot to mention that before I disassembled the amp, I plugged it in and tried it with me strat (2008 American Standard, no less). It was poppy, scratchy, and genuinely offensive to my ears. Just touching the Treble control produced out-of-this-world screeches that would make a drummer wince.
Once disassembled, I hoped that no parts would have to be replaced and that this amp’s recovery would be based on spraying contact cleaner on the pot shafts and re-soldering some solder joints, especially those holding power resistors.
I brought the amp to its original owner and I asked him to give it a try. He couldn’t believe (or he had forgotten) how clean and crisp sounded like. This amp saw only one original owner for some 30 years. He had stopped playing it for about a decade but was glad to put it back in his live gigging arsenal once I was done with it.
Also, check out what some on Reverb are saying about the Marshall Valvestate 10.
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