chase up

I wasn't exactly overjoyed that "Nate" had not found the time to get the case re-covered in the intervening month since Bruce had assured me he'd be tackling it next day.

But at least there was something of a revised plan shaping up. Or so I thought...

Nearly five weeks later I've heard nothing more, so it's time for another call - see part 45.

Perhaps using some CAPITAL LETTERS will help?

No, in fact I got no reply and was so fed up with trying to get a straight answer from Mr Zinky that I left it for another month.

Then I had an idea - it's not so easy to dodge questions like that during a telephone call. The number's on the Zinky website so in early December 2008 I decided to give him a call - see part 43.

Still trying to be polite and understanding here.

So what about the other stuff? Well, there was no reply to my last email of September so another month later I tried again.

See how I actually think the amp is within days of being ready to ship back!

But there was no reply to that mid-October email, so I tried a third time at the end of October.

Finally I get a response, and it's somewhat self-critical - see part 41.

So as of 19 August the amp was all but ready, but more weeks have gone by with no news.

Well suddenly it looks like we're into a slightly different problem - see part 39.

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.

I acknowledged Bruce's previous email... and then another month went by with no indication of completion.

So I fired off another upbeat enquiry. The reply was - at the time - equally upbeat - see part 36.

I wasn't quite sure if an actual fix had been done for the reverb so I asked again.

This time I didn't get a reply, so chased them up after another month.

There was no answer in June, so I tried again in July.

Weeks are going by and I'm getting very used to my backup amp, which not surprisingly is giving me no problems at all.

A week after my July email I get a reply - see part 34.

I was confused because looking at the valves in the amp, the 12AT7 did not appear to be in the right place. It should be the small valve right next to the red RCA plug in the attached picture I think!, but there was a 12AX7 there. Although I'd got a PDF of the Superfly user guide, for some reason it did not include a simple diagram of the valve placement.

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.

It took me a week or so to find the time to check out the amp and my observations were not exactly conclusive - I still had an intermittent problem, but had it just become more intermittent?

Receiving no reply by 20 February, I re-sent the email with the comment "Hoping this will appear on your radar this time..." (see below right).

This was the first indication that the initial quick response from Bruce might not be typical. However a response did come - see part 6.