Wally Dow

I sure do miss my SL100.

It was stolen from me in St Petersburg, Fla years ago by a guy named Jeff Taylor, from my house. I later found it in the possession of Rocky Ruckman, who knew darned well it was stolen from me.

After some covert placement of markings on the amp head, I had the help of the St Pete police in recovering it.

While Rocky Ruckman had the amp, he had really abused the outside of it and I was sick about it and refused to pay the full price for the amp since I had bought it new, complete with the vinyl covers that were made for it at Bringe and Wilsey Music Store, and wound up letting old man Bringe take it back. Of course, the covers were missing when we found it. I have to thank my brother-in-law, Larry P Bickford, for helping me track it down, and even gave me the name of the person who had it. It took us almost a year and a half to find it.

I will NEVER forgive Taylor or Ruckman for what they did.

I just wish I had a '72 SL100 again. It was sweet. ECC83s into EL34s. Full stack ... 1959, 1960A and 1960B.

And, yes I am damned sure about the names of the perps.

__________________

Wally Dow

"Honey", my American Deluxe Strat - 2 tone burst - tinted V-neck in Gator G-Tour case

Samson Concert IV wireless
Marshall JCM601 Amp
Korg DT1 Pro Tuner
Roland GP8 w/FC100 w/ EV5
Furman Rack Power

Empty Wallet

Brett Blackmore

Hi Wally,

Wow - I feel for you!

Here is a true story - one of my first amps was a Vox AC 30 which I bought from my friend's older brother. I loved it - had it well over a year, no probs - and then some stranger comes up to me during a gig in a pub and claims it is his - he aggressively demands it back on the spot. I had the amp for so long that it was a piece of me and I was enormously convinced he was mistaken - then one by one things started going wrong - he has 2 people with him who I know and consider trustworthy, and they were backing him up - they knew of the theft in the past. He claimed he knew the serial number and promptly made a phone call from the bar to someone at his house - he wrote the number down and returned - with half the bar grumbling behind him - the suspense was killing me - he read out the number and guess what? It was his serial number...

I was floored. The end of the world had come.. Oh nooooooo - WTF?

And then, my bandmates started laughing and so did the stranger, and then half the bar who had come over growling... "April fools day!" they all cheered! Bastards! They had me going there... yet I was genuinely shaken... it could happen to anyone.

Since then I have written down the serial numbers of all my amps&guitars and always try and reduce the number of items I have to schlepp with me to a gig. I have even seen someone try and walk off with an amp still plugged in - he yanked the cables out whilst he was walking away... Manchester was a hard school of knocks...

Cheers Brett

Wally Dow

I have had to really think back to those years. I am mistaken in the year of that amp. It had to have been a '70 or a '71 model SL100. I am fairly certain I bought it in either late 1970 or very early 1971, because my youngest daughter was born about 12 months after I bought the amp and her birthday is 12-07-71. At the same time I got the amp I also bought a gold top Les Paul Deluxe (the model with the sort of mini humbuckers on it and the cream colored trim and pick guard). When I let the amp go back, I had to let the guitar go back, too.

In the pictures of the Marshall amplifier stacks in the Marshall Forum header picture, the one on the right hand side looks just like it. It had toggle switches located on the left side of the front panel, rather than the rocker type switch. And it had four inputs, located on the right hand side of the front panel, two "normal" and two "bright" and I used to run into both inputs in parallel by jumping across with a one foot shielded cable.

What makes me so sick about this is that I am now going to be 65 on December 19th, this year. I try to survive on a disability check, but in this economy it is damned near an impossibility. I am starving for these few months so I can build a decent rig to play through and to get the cases that will protect my gear.

Even after all the years since 1972, I still miss that amplifier. I always have and probably always will. I have tried in vain to find an amp that sounds as good as that one did, but nothing comes close. What a feeling it would be to play through one of those again.

I will never be able to afford to replace it with either an authentic '70s SL100 or even a true reproduction of it.

It leaves me sick at heart.

__________________

Wally Dow

"Honey", my American Deluxe Strat - 2 tone burst - tinted V-neck in Gator G-Tour case

Samson Concert IV wireless
Marshall JCM601 Amp
Korg DT1 Pro Tuner
Roland GP8 w/FC100 w/ EV5
Furman Rack Power

Empty Wallet

kryan5732

I feel for you Wally. This is my first post but I can understand. I am a working musician and in 1994 had two guitars stolen, an LP and a '57 reissue Strat. The Strat never made it back - I found the LP nine years later in Guitar Center - so the moral is don't give up the notion that you will never again have a SL100 - you might!!!

Oh, and my strat's serial was V010258 if anyone ever sees it - thanks!

ROCKERRICK

Yeah guys,
Losing your favorite old amp, to some low life isn't any fun, now is it?
My story goes back to late spring of '75. (around May, I seem to recall)
I was playing a gig, that my band at time did often, at "The Plush Horse", in Huntsville, Al. (a very large rock club, at the time)
We finished for the night, around 1:30 am & I was hangin' around, talking with friends of mine in other areas of the club (it was a physically large club) and when I went back to the stage, (20-30 minutes later) to get my guitars (we were playing the next night too, so there was no tear down, that night) Low & behold, my late '73 50w MkII head was gone off of my stack! Yeah, that's right! Some low life, had come right up on the stage & grabbed that head & apparently run right out the back stage door with it! The thing must've still been pretty hot, when he grabbed it!
I never had another non MV Marshall, that sounded like that one did & I'd sure love to get it back some day. Luckily, I do have some pretty good "real" professional studio recordings, with this amp & a '70 Les Paul Custom, that I had at the time & It's really an amazing tone, even today.
I've still got the original sales receipt for that head (yeah, I'm a bit of a pack rat!) I purchased that head new on 2-21-'74 for (are you ready for this!) $306.90 (it was retailing for $415.00, at the time, the price had just jumped from $399.00 retail, when Merson started delivering the now 6550 output MkII's in the states) from Robbins Music Center, in Huntsville. The Serial number of the head is 8383E (the 16th or 17th of Dec. '73 production date) & it was the first MkII model, that Robbins recieved, after Marshall started designating the amps to be delivered in the states, as the MkII model. I still have the letter that came from Merson Muscial, explaining the differences, in the new MkII series, vs. the EL34 model, which were cooking output tubes like crazy, back then.
So, if anyone has ever run across that old 1987 head, with that serial number:
8383E
Please drop me a line!
Believe it or not, I ran across 1987 model, serial number 8389E, on e-bay a couple of years ago! Now, that's close! Only 6 units later! Build tag of 12-17-73. (So, mine was built on either 12-14 (Fri) or 12-17 (Mon) of '73)
I do still have witnesses, to the theft of that amp, available to testify and there was a Police report made about the theft, the next day, with HPD!
Oh, I do have a few good pix of it also (if it would help), it was originally a triple black plastic flat bat handle. toggle switch front panel, with the Marshall logo a bit crooked, (lower on the left side, of the logo, with it just getting into the gold piping across the middle of the front panel)
Thanks guys!
E-mail me direct at:RICKD@COMCAST.NET, if you have any info. on that serial number 50w.
Rock ON!