case

October ends with no response from Bruce to my email of two weeks previous, so off goes another one.

Will this finally generate an answer, an idea why any mention of supplying my a case is met with - not an answer - but another communication stoppage? Watch this space for part 62.

There it is again - the question about the silver case.

A question apparently with the power to stop Bruce in his tracks. The evidence is compelling - see part 60.

So, nothing complicated, just a reminder of what I'm expecting and an offer still to pay the agreed price for the silver case as well as the power valves.

That can't present a problem after all this time and discussion surely?

Well as suddenly as Bruce appeared to be focused on the amp again, he dropped it - see part 57.

The call was productive in the sense that I could have the silver case, but tediously predictable in that nothing had been done with the amp, irrespective of the issue of re-covering the case.

I decided to fire off a confirmation email just so it was in writing.

I had no real idea of how soon the rest of the work would be done; not very soon as it turned out, judging by my next call - see part 48.

It seemed so straight-forward and would hopefully break the deadlock:

I'd like to have a black case, but would settle for a silver one and could shop around for an affordable re-covering service in the UK once I'd received it.

So that just left the amp to be finished up...

Except that my email wasn't replied to, so after a few days, yet another call seemed necessary - see part 47.

This is really not what I wanted to hear.

I mentioned the replacement power valves and this was the first topic in a surprise email I received from Bruce later the same day (see below right). This email contained even more unwelcome information: they simply couldn't get the silver case re-covered! This despite being told during my first call on 3 December 2008 that "Nate" would do it next day.

So I called the company and to my surprise got straight through to Bruce. The discussion focused on the availability or otherwise of a new head-only case.

He apologised for the delay and when pressed, gave the information on the right.

Being the eternal optimist, I took this as a positive sign and left them to get on with it, expecting that finally the work could be wrapped up.

When I had not heard anything more for yet another month, I figured I'd better call again - see part 44.

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.

An unprecendented number of emails were exchanged on 16 April 2008, this one being far from the last.

I requested costs for the unknown areas and mentioned my willingness to pay for the most straightforward shipping. Back, finally, came some of those costs - see part 22.