Good News....Bad News and Possibly More Bad News: My Marshall JCM2000 DSL100
First the good news, my wonderful wife got me an amp head this past Christmas. The way we celebrate the holiday is to pick up to 3 things you’d like to receive, then come the big day we exchange gifts. That way there is some element of surprise during the festivities.
So I selected my 3, knowing very well the odds of receiving one of the gifts were slim to none (grin). Come the big day and there it was, that one gift I thought would be a bit out of reach. There it was,, a Marshall JCM 2000 100-watt amp, she got a pretty good deal from Guitar Center (online), Grand Rapids, Iowa, it came with an ATA flight case too. I was speechless to say the least. This was going to be a great pairing with my Marshall 1960A cabinet.
Since this was a used piece of gear, and according to the listing on the guitar Center website, it was listed as “Excellent”, First off there was a name stenciled on the flight case was Billy Lee Janey, of course I took a time out from my inspection and had to google his name and search social media just to see who he is, found out Billy Lee Janey is a very accomplished and established touring blues musician from Grand Rapids, Iowa. I took the better part of an hour to watch some videos on Youtube and to read his bio and online reviews, I’ll throw his links down below.
Back to my inspection, and to see what bad news is hidden or obvious, my new to me gear showed heavy use of the handle, no biggie and easily replaceable. If anything, it added some character to the piece, may have been heavily toured from its previous life. The serial number on the rear panel shoed it was a 1997 model, Heck, the amp was over 20 years old, the stories it could tell if it could speak.
Next, I removed the aluminum mesh grill on the back to insure all the tubes were intact, and they were, the inside of the chassis was dusty, still, it was used gear, easily remedied. The back panel showed it was missing an 8-ohm jack input. Not a deal breaker, and easily fixable. So, all I was able to see visually was the handle needed replaced and an input jack, I finally plugged in my Gibson Les Paul and powered up the amp, strummed a few notes, damn this thing was loud even at 1, scared the crap out of my dog though.so onto the worldwide web we go.
I went through Marshall amplification for the handle, this saved me from getting a generic or fake part. The 8-ohm jack was a different story, I found a shop in Nashville, Tn. called British Audio, it actually took me 3 times to get the right part, the first 2 times I thought I knew what I was doing, the third and last try I actually called the shop, and they got me the right part, third time was a charm. Very friendly staff Nashville Audio was.
The handle I could easily install, the 8-ohm jack was another story. I called around here in my neck of the woods, and Guitar Pus in Beckley, WV gave me the name Keith fain, a retired gentleman that did work on amps.
Keith and I spoke on the phone for over an hour, discussing everything from music to photography. Keith came across as a real people person as well as very knowledgeable in amp repair. He did tell me that the Marshall JCM 2000 did have some Bios issues and the main circuit board was manufactured thin and the replacement boards were thicker and more reliable. I am hoping my current circuit board was changed out prior to myself or Billy Lee Janey owning this amp model.
Honestly my heart sank when Keith told me of the issues this particular amp had, at this point, I was just a phone call away from getting authorization to return it to Guitar Center. It took another search on the internet for see the cost of a replacement board, and I decided to keep my new to me amp. Clearly GC needs to rate their used stuff better, I would have rated this amp as in “Good” condition, would I have kept it if it was rated as such? Probably so, the fix isn’t too bad. The only big fix would be a new circuit board, that would cost me around $200 - $250, The early “2000s” had a problem with bias drift, a new board would breathe new life into it. It really wasn’t so bad after all, and the not so bad to worse news actually had a silver lining, and as promised I added all relevant links below.
