I was very privileged in 2006 to be asked to work on seven             amplifiers that belong to Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin and after this I was asked to do some work for the band that was backing Sir Cliff Richard.

The first four amplifiers for Jimmy were small buskers amplifiers that were designed by the infamous Mike Matthews, President of Electro Harmonix in New York. They were the Mike Matthews ‘Freedom’ Amplifiers and I gather Jimmy uses them in the studio rather than for busking!

 They are solid-state and powered off 24 volt DC, obviously for use with 2, 12-volt batteries that would sit in the bottom of the cabinet. These amplifiers have phenomenal gain and although have only a single 12” speaker give a fantastic overdrive sound. These particular amplifiers were water damaged as they had been in storage for sometime and had mildew on them so they needed cleaning and the cabinets restored by Boring Brian of Hedgerley who did a wonderful job. See below.

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These amplifiers had been converted to work off the American 110 v 60 Hz mains and a transformer and rectifier had been mounted in the bottom of the cabinet together with a smoothing capacitor, clearly visible in the picture above. However no power connector was installed and the mains leads were connected directly to the transformers without a fuse or a switch. That meant that as soon as the leads were plugged in the units were on.

 I made up 4 mains leads, one for each amplifier, with American plugs and modified the wiring on the amplifier to accept a switch and a fuse mounted on the new IEC 3 pin connector together with a Varistor that would blow the fuse instantly a 230 volt supply was connected. I also indicated on the cabinet above the connector that only 110-volt AC mains were to be used with these units.

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After these units were delivered three Marshall Heads were picked up. A JCM45 and 2 fairly early 100-Watt heads one of which was Jimmy’s No1 head fitted with KT88’s!

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This is one of the early 100-Watt heads.

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This is the No 1 Head with the four KT88’s clearly visible.

The JTM45

 Sometime later in 2007 I was asked if I could look at Mr Pages Hi-Fi. I said I didn’t really do Hi-Fi amplifiers but they said it was all valve and would I please at least take a look. I agreed, well it’s not everyday…etc and it did belong to Him…so I agreed. It was a heavy brute but it was my first and as yet only face-to-face meeting with Mr Jimmy Page himself. Lionel, Jimmy’s helper, assistant and, I gather, long time friend, took the unit out of the back of their car. While I was exchanging pleasantries with the man himself, Lionel was slowly getting smaller under the weight of this unit and started turning unhealthy colours! So my meeting was cut rather short but I did get his autograph in my copy of ’17-Watts?’ by Mo Foster. I took a photo of this unit, which is pictured below.

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The unit is an H & H Scott stereo tuner amplifier using a total of 21 valves. The mains transformer is in the top right and the two smaller output transformers for each channel are in the top left and top centre of the photograph.

Just after these amplifiers were delivered I was asked to sort out a 4 X 12 LAB speaker cabinet that had 3 Jensen speakers missing. The fourth was to be used as a spare and I had to source 4 Jensen speakers for Jimmy.

 Sometime after this Sir Cliff Richard was in the studios getting ready for his Christmas tour. His Lead guitarist uses a VHT 100 watt head that had a mixture of fairly knackered EL34’s from about three different manufacturers. These were replaced with a quad matched set of Svetlana EL34’s.

His Bass guitarist uses a Hartke head into a SWR Henry cabinet. The cabinet had a few different impedance speakers and no doubt different power rating as well. These were duly replaced and some work was also done on the Hartke head.

Alvin From Wembley Guitar Center

Laney vc50 -Replaced the interface boards (rear panel)

Oliver from Furnaze

Mesa Boogie Dual Rectifier -replace out-put tubes

Marshall 2203 head - replaced EL34's with 6L6's, followed by Zak Wilde convertion.

Mesa Boogie DC3 combo. converted to head only. with a American Black Walnut cabinet hand craft by our associate cabinet maker 'Boring' Brian Ascough. Also repaired reverb unit.

Wayne Martin

Fender Prosonic - Complete valve replacement.

Fender Tonemaster - Valve replacement and re-biased out-put valves

Fender Concert - Health check after heavy fall.

Fender Super Sixty

Selmer Treble 'n' Bass - Pots replaced

Lee Ryder

Fender Twin Reverb - Intermittent dry joint problem solved.

John Macay

Ashdown Mag 350 bass amp - Powered up and used without speaker connected, fuses replaced health check done.

Hannah Cope

SWR 4004 bass amp - Out put stage completely burned out, replaced and repaired under insurance