I have to admit to never seeing one of these amplifiers before. What a silly name Splawn
When it was first heaved in to the shop, I thought it was a Marshall. Customer said it lit up but no sound. Big beefy beast, 4 x EL34s in the output stage, rated at 100W. With the chassis whipped out of the cabinet, first impressions were good. Nice big transformers, decent size and quality components. And, proper size potentiometers for once, not those silly little PCB types you find these days.
Quite a high HT rail (500V plus a bit) so be careful. The output stage was alive and drawing current, so nothing nasty there. No signals, apart from HT, could be found around the ECC83s in the pre amp stage. There was no heater voltage. This traced back to an open circuit rectifier proving the smoothed DC to the heaters. Why spoil a nice design with a little rectifier which would have had to work hard all it’s life supplying the angry pixies to the heater chain before giving up. A replacement rectifier which had gone through puberty was fitted and bolted to the chassis to help cooling.
Now we had an output, but very lopsided. All 4 EL34s tested, 2 were useless and the other 2 have seen better days. To keep cost down, a couple of secondhand good emission valves were used. Output now as it should be, user controls cleaned, chassis back in it’s box. Have to say, it sounds very nice. Typical toppy like a Marshall, but all good. Odd switch on the front saying 1st, 2nd, 3rd Gear. Didn’t notice any cogwheels inside?
