$100 upgrade

So here's a short but complete list of what I'm expecting - again.

Bruce has had the amp for three and a half months, so none of this should be a surprise, right?

We should really be on the homeward straight, yes? Sadly not - Bruce did not reply to this email at all so a month later I was in a less optimistic mood - see part 38.

We finally seemed to be getting somewhere after 7 days of exchanging emails.

I pointed out I shouldn't need a new reverb pan and tried to summarise the known costs.

Bruce's reply was still on track, fortunately - see part 24.

Finally some costs for the amp shell...

However there's a little doubt there as to whether there is one available quite as easily as I'd expected, considering that the Superfly was/is still advertised as being in production.

Also, I shouldn't need another reverb pan - I've already got two which work as well as each other!

Finally some thoughts on biasing that rather went over my head. $60 for a new set of power tubes should sort things out though. I hastened to respond - see part 23.

I tried to restate the problem - no complete failure, just intermittent lack of reverb.

Aside from the shipping cost, I noted that I'd have to buy a backup amp to use while the Superfly was away. It seems a reasonable question to ask how long that would be.

...and I still couldn't find a serial number anywhere.

At least this time I got a quick response - see part 10.

So it seemed like the upgrade could be quite involved... but no-one in the UK was able to do it?

Shipping costs could be minimised subject to a possible wait? At this point I didn't know what waiting was!

Strange question at the end though: I'd mentioned in my first email that I could not find the serial number.

Still, I went back to the amp to have another good look. See part 9 for my response.

My email on 22 February (right) asked for more information from which to make a decision. It wasn't clear whether Bruce reckoned he could instruct me to do the upgrade myself (gulp!) or just to try and sort out the reverb problem. If the upgrade required expertise, was it available in the UK?

At that point I had not even seen inside the amp chassis - a daunting array of circuitry (see picture of the area around the reverb driver transformer) to handle the MIDI switching as well as the audio shaping.

Next day I received a reply (opposite). I didn't really want to start adding components into the circuitry or making changes as per paragraphs one and three, my knowledge of electronics being sparse.

However I was interested in the second paragraph which mentioned an upgrade service. $100 seemed affordable... except that I was in the UK so shipping it overseas would be expensive.

I sent another email to try and understand what my options were - see part 7.