no charge

Be still my beating heart! Is my amp now in the capable hands of FedEx? Has Bruce had a communiqué from the BBB that was more trouble to ignore than to act on?

Well the tracking number is real enough. Projected delivery date is 10 February.

Obviously whatever Bruce needed to devote all his time to was more lucrative even than a $1,000 bounty on fixing my amp.

So back came an effectively worthless assurance that he would do so at no cost - but when? No time soon it transpired - see part 54.

Suddenly the whole task appears more laborious than the early "nearly fixed it" emails implied.

But Bruce is going to try to get it done within a week and there'll be no charge for the update - that's got to be good?

I still haven't got confirmation on the other requirements though, so I had to send yet another email asking the same thing - see part 42.

Bruce's reply gave some more information on which tube sent the signal to the reverb, but nothing about the time required to do the upgrade once he'd got the amp.

I went back to the amp, took the back grille off (remember, all this time I'm still using the amp for weekly band rehearsals) and tried to match up his description with the positioning of the valves. See part 11 for my findings.

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.