One of the pleasures of living near a college are the bi-annual trash heaps that spontaneously appear on the sidewalks in the neighborhood. Lovely trash that has lost it's home, free TVs, particleboard desks warping freakishly over the course of weeks as they soak up copious masses of rain, lovely filth typically of less than no value, etc, etc, until now.
Day One: Driving to work in the a.m., I have the pleasure of trying not to think about what obscene acts of liquid carnal depravity must have happened on top of the filthy mattresses in the new filthy mattress pile on the corner that got them so filthy. The Horror...
Day Two: In addition to the filthy mattress pile I now observe an additive filthy couch, most likely infected with scabies, soaking up the morning dew. Generally cursing my fellow man as I drive on, I happen to catch a glimpse of a seldom seen sight...guitar amplification? I hit the brakes, back up, get out, and find a little Epiphone practice amp that someone has decided not to love anymore, after trying, it appeared, quite unsuccessfully to get the back unscrewed. Hmmm...
I pack it in the car, get it to work, plug it in, light turns on, but no one home as of yet. Double Hmmm... I take it home, plug in the Slaytar, and I can hear some guitar but not much volume. Progress.
Day Three: We start with the tear down. Where's Nathan when you need him?
After some fiddling and diddling, with the circuit board that is, I managed to track down a couple cold solder joints on the input jack and the gain knob, but that was not the fix I was looking for. Still no amplified guitar output from the speaker, so I figured I'd check the headphone output. Same problem. With the headphones still on, and strumming the guitar, I start wiggling around all the components when SUDDENLY at FULL GAIN AND VOLUME THROUGH THE HEADPHONES!!!!!!!!! it get a brief blast of sonic destruction directly into my brain. It seems I'd found found the inner demon seeking release, locked as it was behind a bad treble pot (the treble "potentiometer", a variable resistor that sends 0-100% of the high-frequency bandwidth to ground and out of the signal).
I try a few different ways to get the pot working but eventually decide "fuck it" and bypass the pot instead of trying to track down a new one. 0% treble to ground but functional otherwise. Here's the fix:
With all the parts organized, re-assembly begins.
And finally:
25W of full-treble practice amp resurrected from a pile of filthy mattresses. Not too shabby.
