The quandry I struggle with is that the vintage amps are much easier to work on, but they cost more, while the newer PCB amps eat up lots of time just getting them apart where I can work on them.
A lot of the PCB amps I get show signs of previoius repairs and some are even marked up with a sharpie to show the exact locations. Apparently, a lot of the techs out there don't like the tear into the amp far enough to get to the back side of the circuit boards. I am seeing all kinds of jumpers and tacked on components on the tops of the boards. I had a Classic 30 on my bench last month that was like this. It was a bit of a pain to get the board out of it, but I was able to fix it by reflowing the solder on all of the heavier componants and on every jumper (there are tons of them) between the three circuit boards. The guy is a gigging musician and this amp had been living in the trunk of his car for two years before he started having problems.
