My Marshall 1974x 18 Watt
This here is a Marshall model 1974x 18 Watt head built from a Mojotone kit by an old friend and bandmate, Ben. Ben was a great pedal steel/guitar player and kindred vintage gear nut. He passed away a few years ago and left me this amp. It is one of my most cherished possessions.
When I met Ben he was building pedals and had the most amazing vintage pedal and amp (and guitar) collection. When he mentioned wanting to explore amp building but was afraid of getting electrocuted I helped him with the science involved with making sure you don’t get zapped inside amps and heavily encouraged him to get his feet wet. His pedal builds were downright amazing. He had great attention to detail and the sort of saint like patience it takes for creating stunningly clean wiring inside ridiculously tiny enclosures.
He started with a tweed Deluxe from a kit from Mojotone. This became one of his favorite amps out of an impressive collection of killer vintage tube amps. It did sound good…and it was one of the tidiest wiring jobs I’d even seen. A great amp. After that he was looking for another amp circuit to build. I had just made an 18 watt lite head from the transformers of a 1940 Philco radio and thought it sounded really good so I suggested an 18 watt to Ben.
He ordered an 18 watt head kit from Mojotone. This kit caused a bit of strife. I don’t recall the exact particulars but the included layout and instructions were really poorly thought out. Mojotone used a chassis from another Marshall circuit – one that didn’t have tremolo so the placement of the tremolo parts caused super annoying grounding/hum issues. There are a number of angry posts on forums about this kit scattered about the www.
Ben reached out for help getting the tremolo working so I borrowed the amp and re-routed some things in the trem. circuit and used the second speaker jack for the tremolo footswitch to get it away from the section that caused the terrible hum. I don’t think that Ben was ever 100% happy with my solution since it strayed pretty far from the instructions/layout but the amp is quiet and the tremolo works fine.
This is a great amp. The tremolo sounds every bit as lush as the trem. in my 64 Princeton. It has amazing rock tones when cranked but unfortunately there aren’t many clubs in Seattle (probably anywhere) that allow for that sort of stage volume. I recall this being one of Ben’s complaints – it’s just too loud by the time you get it doing its best Marshall thing. I believe that maybe hunting down some super inefficient speakers might get this in the ballpark of club friendly but I have never explored that.
I’ve used this head with both my 2 x 10 Vox cab and my 2 x 12 cab loaded with 2 WGS Veteran 30s. It sound’s awesome with both. I have not used this amp live partly because of the stage volume thing and partly because I don’t feel comfortable bringing it out anywhere if I’m not babysitting it 100% of the time. I’ve used it for rehearsals though and it’s super fun. I’ve also used this for quite a few home recordings and it records really well. I recorded some solos on the last Riffbrokers record but sadly, due to a mixup at mix time those tracks didn’t get used. I’ll definitely be working it into the next record.
Ben Jones: Killer pedal steel/guitar player and amp/pedal builder extraordinaire