The Violator - '69 Marshall Super Lead

The Violator - 1969 Marshall Super Lead

This amp is nicknamed "The Violator". I had some people over to jam and one of my friends said it was so loud that he felt violated.

This is my 1969 Marshall Super Lead. It was in bad condition when I got it. I have been slowly restoring it to its original glory. It has a Mercury Magnetics Axiom Tone Clone O100JM output transformer. The power transformer was also changed with an old Marshall transformer. Whoever wired the OT, was sloppy. I re-wired that crap already. The board and pots still have most of the red dye on them suprisingly. The changed parts look like 1 bias cap, bias trim pot, 2nd stage Rk (no .68 bypass). There is one wire connection that was moved also, it was changed to shared cathode (like super bass). One of the output tube sockets was also changed. It also had control grid (1k) and suppressor grid (5.6k) resistors added.

So far I have added the .68uF bypass cap on the second stage V2A cathode, changed V1 back to super lead style split cathode and changed the 0.005uF (5000pf) bright cap to 100pF (plexi style). I've also changed that output tube socket to a British McMurdo socket. The replaced socket was cheap plastic and also suffered from a crushed pin. This crushed pin caused the amp to blow fuses when it didn't make a good connection (and also made the valves glow red). It even has new JJ EL34's now.

Look to the far right and you can see a bundle of wires from the PT that are held together by a rubber band.

Split cathode on V1 .68uf/2K7 and 330uf/820;
.0022 1st stage bright coupling cap;
470k mixer resistors;
100pf bright cap (was 0.005uF originally);
500pf mixer bypas cap;
.68 bypass cap at V2;
33k/500pf tone stack combo;
47K NFB resistor connected to the speaker jacks;
.022 output coupling caps;
220k bias splitter resistors;
.1 cap on the presence control;
Plate voltage is 410v (very low for a SuperLead, but sounds really brown);

Note the Canadian style impedance selector.

Before cleaning the chassis, what a rust bucket!

After I cleaned the chassis.

Installation of MV Control

I installed the RICH mod. It's a really simple PPIV (1 dual pot and 5 wires) that sounds great.

The orange drop cap is the 0.68uF that I added to V2a. It looked like the original cap was removed. The orange drop is the only cap I had at the time to use. I'll probably replace it when I get the time (and cap).

The MV knob replaces one of the four speaker jacks (no drilling allowed).

Notice the purple feedback wire that is connected to the speaker jack. That means that the power amp gets more gain, the lower impedance I select (i.e. more cabs), Hmmm.