RiverRatt

I'm not offended really, just a bit miffed that the JCM2000 series seems to get an undue amount of bad hype. I don't believe that they are any worse than any other line of amps that are wave soldered, including the current Vintage Modern and JVM models. With a wave solderer, you are going to have some bad solder joints - there's no way around it. I don't believe that means that the DSL and TSL circuts are poorly designed, just that they made so many that a few bad ones are going to slip past quality control. It seems like every Marshall model since the Plexi's has its detractors, whether deservedly or not. I've seen metal panels that had cutouts for cooling fans, heard horror stories about JCM 600's that had heat issues, 6100's that have MIDI controllers that are prone to fail. Fact is, we usually only hear from the people who have faulty amps - not the thousands who have amps that never need servicing. These are all great amps or we wouldn't be here talking about them.
If I understood the original problem, V1 was not lighting up and V2 wasn't as bright as the others, which isn't unusual. The fact that the problem followed the valve that was in V1 to me indicates that it needs to be replaced. If the replacement valve fails as well, then start looking for something more complicated. I'll always try the cheapest fix first.