An eBay special has arriived - a Marshall DSL20 head in condition best described as "gigged". Seller told me it had some crackling noises and probably needed new output valves. Consequently it was on the market at a ridiculously low price so I had to reach for the credit card. Here's what arrived ...

First rule with a possibly dodgy amp is DON'T PLUG IT IN. Instead I removed the chassis screws and did the usual safety checks on the innards, looking for things like bad solder joints or leaking capacitors. Everything looked fine but fuck me, Marshalls are not built the way I remember. All the valves are mounted on a PCB, including the EL34 output tubes that run a fair amount of plate current and generate a considerable amount of heat so this may be a problem in the future. Also concerning to see just how small the filter capacitors are on this amp. Where you would expect to find axial caps on a tagboard, here the capacitors are radials about half the size of "normal" ones and mounted straight onto the PCB.

Even weirder was the reverb unit, a small DSP board slotted vertically into the main PCB. Not a great sound but better than nothing and rather surprisingly for a low-price amp there is an effects loop so it'll take a Strymon or an EvenTide. Or maybe even the BOSS GT-1000CORE. To be determined at a later date. For now this looks like a great little amp to take to jam sessions.

Anyway, a pair of new ElectroHarmonix EL34's have worked wonders and while it's not a classic Plexi sound, it's near enough for just under £210. Just a bit depressing to see Marshalls churned out from a factory in Vietnam rather than built with care in Milton Keynes.