Back to the old school

Had a look in my cupboard the other day. There at the bottom covered by a plastic bag was my old guitar amp, a Park 20 Watt Vintage Combo L.E. Last time I used it (7 years ago?) it made a few spluttering sounds and a fizzling noise then refused to do anything else. I've tried looking on the 'net for information about it without any luck at all. About the only information I can find is that the original Park amplifiers were made by Marshall from about 1965 to 1980 to get around a distribtion agreement with Rose Morris. The insides of the amp are meant to be identical to similar Marshall models from the same period, so the nearest thing I can find is the 1974 Lead & Bass, 20W 1x12" combo. These were made between 1967 and 1974. It's possible that my amp may have been made during that period, but I have a feeling that it's a bit later due to the 'Vintage' tag on the amp. Maybe Marshall was using up spare parts of the other combos? I bought the thing in the late 80s from a second-hand guitar shop in Brighton for about £70.

I thought I really should try to get this thing fixed. It was the main part of 'my guitar sound' for so many years that it would be a shame to leave it languishing at the bottom of the cupboard. I pulled the valves out of the back of the amp and had a Google to see which valves I'd need. Luckily the smaller pair of the four valves inside had the code ECC83. The larger pair took a bit of digging until I found out they were EL84 or 12AX7. So a quick trip down to the local guitar store and I returned with four shiny new valves manufactured by Electro Harmonix and made in Russia. Cost me a pretty penny too. Way over the dollar to pound conversion on the Electro Harmonix website.

So tonight I'm taking it on a little trip down the rehearsal studio to see how it performs after all these years. Fingers crossed there won't be any spluttering or fizzing this time.

Garden Snail

Garden Snail
Originally uploaded by Dan Burgess.

Took this photo with my new Fuji Finepix S7000. It has a great super-macro setting, as you can see. I really like the small depth-of-field that the macro setting has.

It had just finished raining and all the snails in my Mum's street had decided to come out and have a scoot around. This one was going up the wall and trying to get into the garden. The picture was taken from above looking down.