How I spent my afternoon....my Holland and Deluxe Reverb saga.

Mark Wein

Grand Poobah
Staff member
I bought a speaker from Scumback Speakers last week and when I installed it I started hearing some funky distortion in my amp - that part is here: http://markweinguitarlessons.com/forums/threads/incoming.64275/

Over the weekend the owner Jim offered to let me come up to his shop and he would take a look at the problem for me so I went up this morning and spent nearly 4 hours there...we tried a bunch of combinations of speakers, cabs with my amps head, guitars and he even had the guy there in the shop build me a speaker on the spot to try a configuration that they didn't have in stock....the problem appears to be with my amp so it goes on to my local amp tech next. While I was there Jim (the owner) let me play some great guitars including his 1968 Les Paul Deluxe (that he bought in 1976 and toured with for 9 years), a 1954 goldtop that had been turned into possibly my favorite Les Paul of all time with the original p90s, a compensated wrap around bridge and decently high fret wire and his replica of Eric Claptons "Fool" SG: http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=144555

He also has a couple of Orville Les Pauls, one of which I tried and thought was KILLER.

It was a fun day if disappointing in terms of getting my amp running the guys were super cool to me and really spent a lot of time trying to figure out my problem even messing with the cabinet and changing a few preamp tubes out for me. I definitely left the shop a fan :)
 
You "A" list guys get all the breaks :mad:







:Wave:
lol. I'm more of a "Z list" guy but they seem to be big on customer service. Jim doesn't seem like the kind of guy that suffers fools easily but if you have an issue he'll go out of his way to make sure you are taken care of.
 
lol. I'm more of a "Z list" guy but they seem to be big on customer service. Jim doesn't seem like the kind of guy that suffers fools easily but if you have an issue he'll go out of his way to make sure you are taken care of.
It probably helps that you are a professional gigging musician with a music school and decent online presence, too...I don't mean that they wouldn't extend tremendous customer service to me if I had a problem, but the potential for exposure from you is that much greater...plus you are a righteous dude, which doesn't hurt either...:helper:
 
It probably helps that you are a professional gigging musician with a music school and decent online presence, too...I don't mean that they wouldn't extend tremendous customer service to me if I had a problem, but the potential for exposure from you is that much greater...plus you are a righteous dude, which doesn't hurt either...:helper:
I got the feeling that Jim was either unaware or unaffected by that stuff. His client list is full of much bigger fish than me.
 
Nice to know that a reputable company is still out there!
I think that they are all over the board in the boutique industry but most of the guys who have been in business more than a couple of years get it that their reputation is all they have in the end. When I dealt with John Suhr it was the same thing and I've had good experiences with lots of folks like James Santiago from Voodoo Lab and David Barber from Barber Electronics.
 
Cool. I've heard really good things about their speakers. I never tried them, as I have never swapped a speaker out in any of my amps.
 
Cool. I've heard really good things about their speakers. I never tried them, as I have never swapped a speaker out in any of my amps.
I know a lot of guys dig the speakers and since I needed to change the one in my Holland I figured I would give them a try, especially since the sale price made it cheaper than buying the comparable Celestion that I had in my Suhr.
 
I think that they are all over the board in the boutique industry but most of the guys who have been in business more than a couple of years get it that their reputation is all they have in the end. When I dealt with John Suhr it was the same thing and I've had good experiences with lots of folks like James Santiago from Voodoo Lab and David Barber from Barber Electronics.

I know that Brian Wampler is great from when I met him and Doug Kauer is totally awesome!!! Add in Douglas White of Jet City to the list for me.
 
OK. Appointment made for Friday morning to drop the Holland and my Deluxe off at Kevin Nelsons place for service.
 
How long will he have them?
Don't know. He's usually pretty quick with the turnaround but both amps need some trouble shooting and the Holland will be something he's never seen before although just measuring components and swapping out the ones that don't measure their printed values isn't that hard.
 
Don't know. He's usually pretty quick with the turnaround but both amps need some trouble shooting and the Holland will be something he's never seen before although just measuring components and swapping out the ones that don't measure their printed values isn't that hard.
Gotcha...hope it works out for you...
 
Yeah...I'm sure it will. The nice thing about amps is that you can just keep swapping out parts until its fixed.
 
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