Here's a link to the pics:
http://imgur.com/a/S2XjY
A few things I encountered:
-The faceplate was a bit too large for the cabinet. Once it was installed there was just no getting the chassis to fit into the slot in the cabinet for the control panel. It was rather unfortunate as once I realized it was stuck, pulling it back out caused the ends of the faceplate to bend and chip off some of the paint. I was rather dissapointed by this as it's a beautiful faceplate, but once I got it out I was able to bend them back a bit and touch it up with a black paint pen. I offered to buy my friend a new one but he wasn't bothered by it so we just left it. In order to get it to fit I used the dremel tool with some sort of milling bit (I think, not sure what its called) with the faceplate installed on the chassis and just run it across the top using the lip of the chassis as a guide. It looks fine now and the lip of the cabinet hides it very well.
-Mounting holes where not drilled in any of the boards, not a big deal, just takes a bit of time to line them up properly with the holes drilled in the chassis. I used a white paint pen and taped the boards in place to mark through the holes where the boards should get drilled.
-Chassis mounting holes in the cabinet where not drilled. Again no big deal, just something you want to be damn sure to catch before you start installing parts in the chassis, as I think the best way to do it is to lay the chassis flat on top of the cabinet (with the handle removed) line everything up, tape it in place then use white paint pen to dot through the holes in the chassis where the cabinet needs to be drilled. This method worked rather well.
-Missing parts. With a kit that has as many parts as this one did it doesn't surprise me that a few would get forgotten. Marsh amps was very quick to respond and send the parts directly out to me even though I wasn't the one who purchased the kit.
The electronics went together very smoothly thanks to the nice big printout of the schematic and layout that was included. That and the divided parts bins that kept all the component values neatly organized instead of sifting through a giant bag of parts. Upon firing it up it worked right from the get go, well not right away, I forgot a power supply wire but that was quickly fixed. Biased it up. Normal channel seemed good, vibrato had a weird oscillation. I started pulling preamp tubes to see if the issue would go away and the reverb driver did in fact do this. The only thing I had done different was use buss wire and teflon to parellel all three elements of the reverb driver instead of having the anode connection loop over the socket. I figured that might cause a problem and it turns out it did. Clipped that piece out, looped a wire between the two anodes and the problem went away.
Also had an issue with the tremelo circuit making the popping noise at high speeds. It always occured at the same volume level and was affected some by the intensity and especially the reverb control. Probing the control side with a pencil didn't yield any results. However when I moved the cathode wire of the oscillator half of the tremelo tube up and over the socket the problem dissappeared. Guess it must have been coupling with the reverb return. Once all that was done the amp worked perfectly. The only other issue I had was some of the knobs had stripped set screw holes, but again Marsh sent replacements out to me very quickly no questions asked.
The only things that weren't included with the kit were the traditional reverb tank strap so I tacked the bag in with some #8 wood screws and finishing washers. They also didn't include the cable clamps that most fenders had but we had some laying around the shop. I also got some #6 finishing washers to go on the screws from the back panels to keep them from digging into the wood. Plus they look nice and are cheap and easy to get. I also ended up using my color coded wire instead of the traditional yellow included with the kit. I like to make everything color coded, makes it easy to keep track of what's going where. Plus it makes the inside of the amp look like a fiesta
The amp sounds really good. I've never been much of a Fender guy but this thing started to change my mind about that. Its just the right volume, loud enough to hear over a drummer, but not so loud it will piss off the neighbors in the house next door. Of course an apartment would be another story. We ended up going with the Weber 12F150 50w. Its their recommended for Deluxe style amps. A bit too scooped in the mids for me (I've always been more of a marshall guy myself) but I can definitely see why people like it and of course the cleans are sparkly and fantastic. He got many compliments in the show he used it on even compared to the Deluxe re-issue the other guitarist in the band uses.
I also did a couple mods:
-Switched intensity pot. Really nice if you don't use the tremelo much or you want the gain of the normal channel plus reverb. This breaks the connection to ground for the opto output and gives you back the gain that part of the circuit sucks out, even when its disabled. Put a 1M resistor across the switch terminals so it doesn't make a horrible pop everytime the switch is engaged.
-1R bias resistors. The fairly common treatment. They're the huge 10w dales above the powertube sockts. Totally overkill but they were the only 1R's we had and we have a shitload of them lying around here. I hand picked a pair from the pile of old pulls using a high precision ohmmeter to get the closest readings.
Edit: Plate Voltages where also awfully high. Around 450-460 for the 6v6's. However the JJ's should be able to stand up to it from what I understand. Got them biased at just a little under 70%. All the preamp voltages checked out normal.
