CHAMP ELECTRONICS -" THE VINTAGE VALVE
AMP HOSPITAL"
NOTTINGHAM, ENGLAND
THE STORY OF A PEAVEY CLASSIC 50
AMPLIFIER
This
one was………oh so funny!!
Hi everybody. All of you who read this article
must
have, at some point in your life, come across a funny situation where
you have
laughed so much that have had pains in your head and tears steaming
down your
face! Well, this is what happened to me, back in 2006 when my dear
life-long
Australian friend Mervin was over here in the UK for four weeks.
Before I continue with the story of this Peavey
Classic 50 Combo, let me just say that any kind of funny situation in
ones
life is never quite the same by explaining it…..rather than
being there, for
real, at the time! Nevertheless I will try my best to explain the
situation as
it happened!
OK, my dear Australian
friend Mervin was over here in
the UK for a four week visit in 2006, as previously stated. On one
particular day, we had popped down to the local Co-op supermarket to do
some shopping,
about a mile away from my home here in Nottingham. Whilst wandering
around the local store, Mervin spotted some mini pork pies. These are
quite
famous over here in the UK….made by a company called
“Pork-Farms” from Melton
Mowbrey, UK. Mervin picked up a pack of four of
these, to which I
asked him “don’t you have pork pies in
Australia?”, to which he replied
"yes, but I just fancy one". Finishing the shopping we jumped back into
the car
for the short journey home.
It was rush-hour, loads
of traffic and
hold-ups plus…….it was a typical English
day…..full of drizzling rain. As we
were in the traffic, moving slowly, all of a sudden Mervin started
throwing
his arms around in the air…. shouting something! All I could
understand
was….Errm, Ugg, Hey, Blarb, I really thought he was having a
fit or a
heart-attack or something! I just couldn’t make sense of what
he was trying
to say! For a few seconds it really scared me. What I didn’t
realize at the
time was that he had put one of these mini pork pies in his
mouth…..in one
go….and couldn’t speak properly with his mouth
full!
Once reality had set-in,
and after he had calmed-down, chewed
and swallowed the pie, I understood what he was trying to say. It
appeared that
in the slow moving traffic, Mervin had spotted what looked like a combo
amplifier on the drive of a house, on the left of where we had just
past! I
then did a three-point turn, in the middle of this main road, in the
middle
of this rush-hour traffic with cars honking me, causing a hold-up and,
not
knowing what-the-hell was going to happen next!
On pulling onto to the
drive that Mervin pointed out,
there was indeed a combo amplifier, just standing there in the rain! We
got
out of the car and I rang the door-bell. A little old lady answered the
door
and I asked her what was happening with this amplifier and why was it
standing
there in the rain? She explained that it belonged to her son and that
he didn’t
want it…..it had been put out for the rubbish men to take
away! I asked her if
it would be OK for us to take it, of which she replied that would be
OK. So that's what
we did. The inside of it was filled with lots of other
rubbish……lots of paper
and empty Coke bottles etc. We put all of this in the old
lady’s dustbin and
loaded the combo into the boot of my car.
Although it had been
standing in the rain, the other
rubbish that had been stuffed into the back of it had actually
prevented most
of the water from reaching the speakers and doing any permanent damage.
When we got it back home we stripped it out, dried the
slightly damp speakers with a fan heater, removed and serviced the amp
then,
offered it up for sale on EBay. It sold to an
Italian guy for pretty good money
which Mervin and I split between us!
A really funny and unexpected situation
that turned-out to be good and interesting fun!
Cheers, John.
