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Vintage threads from the first ten years

5E3 Kit from Marsh Tube Amp Service

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1/21/2004 2:39 PM
Blindog	5E3 Kit from Marsh Tube Amp Service Has anybody built one of these kits? Anybody ever dealt with them? I'm between Mission and this guy. He seems to be about $60 to $80 less expensive with the same parts, although I know Bruce is highly regarded in this forum for his customer service, so that has to be worth something. www.marshamps.com

1/21/2004 5:01 PM

Wow! Looks cool. Lots of good quality parts. Definitely not a low class act. I like the fact that you get MM tranny as standard without an upgrade needed, nice wood cabinet covered with tweed, and from the looks of it a Weber speaker. That's about as good as it gets unless you want to upgrade the kit yourself with a Jensen P12N speaker. Also noticed that they use orange drops from the looks of the picture.

Not bad for $585 complete.

1/21/2004 6:38 PM
carsten	hi guys! i have one of his tweed-champs, and my experience with him as a person has been very good! and, oh, i like the amp a lot, too cheers - C.

1/30/2004 11:45 PM
anonymous	I got it wrong or things changed on his website. Looks like the MM tranny is now an extra 40 bucks. Also, looks like they just jacked the base price up to $595.

1/22/2004 12:26 AM

I bought a 5E3 kit from Marsh amps. Mike Marsh is an awesome guy and he walked me through every step pretty much, very helpful guy. The amp sounds great, and the quality of the components is great (love those Carbon Comp resistors). The tube sockets are sort of chintzy though. He gave me a layout diagram and a schematic, but most of the transformer wires were different, so this caused a lot of confusion on both our parts. I think that if he had the instructions written out (which he may have now) he'd save himself and his customers a lot of time. In retrospect, I may have just bought a Mission as it has all the hum quieting "mods" in the layout, which Marsh's didn't have. And of course, adding them now is a pain. But I think both have awesome kits.

1/22/2004 6:50 AM

I built one of his 5F1 kits. A few impressions:

The kit is a bargain. You get very good quality parts at a very reasonable price. The workmanship on the cab was excellent. However, quality control is not perfect. My kit had some wrong parts.

Mike Marsh is a great guy and his support is outstanding. He answered a bunch of my questions via email at all hours of the day.

The included instructions are very poor. The reason Mike had to answer so many questions was because the instructions leave so much out and are so often unclear. Mike could save himself a lot of time and trouble if he'd sit down and write good instructions.

In the end what you get is a mixed bag: A schematic and layout diagram straight off the Fender Amp Field Guide, a box full of very good quality parts, some instructions that aren't worth the paper they're printed on, and simply outstanding support from a really nice guy. For my next build, I'm gathering the parts myself but if I were going to buy a kit again, I'd try Mission Amps. They cost a little more but they include "improvements," the instructions are better, and the support, from what I hear, is every bit as good.

1/22/2004 9:38 AM
carsten	hi guys! when i got the tweed-champ from him he told me that he was working on a step-by-step guide for building these and that he wanted to use the pics of the build-process of my very amp for it not sure if he´s already finished that project ... cheers - C.

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