Stolen Amp Recovered; Good News Story!

martinw · July 2018

This doesn't seem to happen often, so I thought it would be worth reporting.

Those of you who've been around long enough might remember that back in 2008, I had an amp stolen from my car, whilst outside a rehearsal room in Ancoats. It was Martamp (pre MJW name) #4, which was a prototype of the Roadstar 36. I'd built it a year or so earlier and had used it for many gigs and rehearsals. Despite publicising it on the net, and posters etc, I heard nothing and assumed the amp had gone forever.

However recently I was contacted by a chap who had come across an amp and wanted some more information on it. He scoured the net and realised that Martamp was now MJW and emailed me through my website. Long story short, I was able to collect it at the weekend whilst down in Manchester.

It's good to see it again, and after a quick clean, it's as good as new, and appears to have been hardly used.So you see, sometimes, stolen stuff does reappear and get back to it's rightful owner!

The amp itself is based on the tremolo channel of the Marshall 1974 without the trem, in this case with the addition of a master volume, and has a 4 x EL84 36 Watt output stage, with a GZ34 valve rectifier. I used the Ampmaker PP36 kit as a basis, and was able to give Barry feedback on how it went, as I don't think he'd sold many at the time. The cabinet is from a defunct JTM60 head, cunningly modified for a right-way-up chassis.

As I'm no longer gigging, although I have a sentimental attachment to this piece of history, If anyone is interested, it is for sale, either as it stands, or it could be reworked with a new cabinet etc to current Roadstar 36 spec (or an AC30 for instance).