Cornford

Had the pleasure of servicing a Hellcat combo this week.   A low serial number from around 2003 or 2004 built to the usual high  Cornford standard. Compared with your average production amp like Fender and Marshall it’s the little things that I notice on these amps that make them stand out.  For example aerospace PTFE … Read more

Hiwatt Hi Gain 50

Problem: excessive hum from speaker. Solution : Often caused by faulty capacitors not smoothing the rectified ac properly however in this amps case it was something else as well.  In this amp a number of op amps that are used for the effects send and return loop are powered by  a 30v supply.  It’s worth … Read more

Vox Cambridge 30

Great looking vintage amps powered by tiny chip amp like you might find in car stereo but don’t let that put you off. Inside you have a pair of quality Celestion speakers,  twin channels clean and valve powered drive channel,  tremolo and reverb depending on model. Construction wise it’s pretty poor inside with a budget … Read more

Laney VH100R

These monster heads are well liked by metal players for their high gain and awesome volume. Well this one came to me like a crippled kitten, working one minute and then cutting out where volume dipped completely strangling the output. The cause? Well Laney do design great amps, in terms of tone, but due the … Read more

Laney VC15R

Nice Diddy combos that have a massive sound despite their tiny size. Issues I have seen inclue: Output transformer cut out after a while and the culprit turns out to be the tiny output transformer. If you google round you’ll find this isn’t such an isolated problem and if you have this then you are … Read more

Mackie SRM350, SRM450

Just recently worked on a few of these lovely PA speakers that are  common site in pubs and mobile DJ.  Great build quality means they are generally very reliable but occasionally things do go wrong. Despite being surface mount components they are good to work on and definitely worth repairing. 

Hiwatt hi gain 50 combo

Well made PCB amps with high quality components and Lead dress. Watch out for the hidden mains fuse holder on the back. Its functiona is combined with voltage selector so if you put it in incorrectly then there could be trouble as you could be accidentally configuring the amp for say 110v and applying 240v.

Hohner Orgaphon 55

What an oddity. Is it a storage heater? Nope its a 212 hybrid combo from Germany and by date on some of the caps 1971. The design inside is completely eccentric,  it feels more like a laboratory prototype than a rock amp. There are bus bars for the HT voltage, ground rail and little clusters … Read more

Amploft