| A dirty Kustom story! [message #2264] |
Thu, 26 December 2002 13:45  |
stevem
Messages: 4755
Registered: June 2004
Location: NY
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Senior Member |
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Well last week I thought I had seen it all!I,am in my forty`s and have been repairing electronics since high school, some of the old tube TVs I have worked on made me almost to sick to eat lunch after finding so much filth and dust and even dried puke! in one TV. But last weeks K200 takes the cake!I had just repaired a guys musicman bass head, even lent him one of my K250 for him to gig with(I gave it my best shoot but for some reason he likes his amp better)when he got his musicman back he told me Hey! I got this old K200 from my guitar players brother, he had it for years, gave up playing bass but dragged it around from house to house and then gave up storing it.My friend said he did not know why it didn`t work , but before he got it the second to last basement it was in got flooded! and then it was stored outside in SHED! for a year. After the 5 minutes it took me to stop my eyes from rolling I said OK! I`ll take a look at it, but do not get your hopes up to much.With those words leaving my mouth 10 minutes latter I was back home with it and began my inspection.First thing was it had a cover, you don`t` see many of them around these days. I also did not see much of a sign of flood damage. I then tried to get the cover off and from being stored outside the cover had srunk to point that I had to sit on one end of the amp just to get the other end off!Once that was done I still did not see all that much water damage, their was some fine sandy/ concrete film on the bottom back of the amp thats about it. At that point I did not think getting it to work would be imposible.So I filped the head over and began to remove the 4 bottom screws that keep it pined in the cab.Yes, I had to use some penitrating oil to get two of them out, but still it wasn`t to bad.Then as I tried to slide the chassie out it was hanging up on some thing. So I pulled harder and in the dim light of where I was saw what looked at first like a blown up filter cap in the power supply.Then I smelled a sent you never forget, rodent urine!As I pulled the amp out all the way and got under some better light I saw that what I thought was a blown cap was a huge wad of some kind of funature stuffing that was overflowing on the transfomer side of the amp!At this point I put on my grinding dust mask and laytex gloves and started to remove the horrible wad of a nest, I just do not know how mice could get in the thru the top gap of the cab and the chassie!!Any way as I found a way to stop gagging and keep the inspection going I found that they had eaten the transformer leads right off, but as I got down to the bottom of the chassie I found that the rodent urine had rotted 3 huge holes in the side and bottom of the chassie! to the point that the power transformer was rocking round by only two rivets! it was UNREAL, you would think that someone had poured battery acid in the amp. The rotted away sections had welded themselves to the the bottom inside of the cab and that is what made it so hard to pull the chassie out.All the controls had masive amounts of grit in them and other circuit maylays. I was sorry to say that the amp was done. The word restoration is beyond this poor K200. The good news is he also has a 100 he wants as a back up to the musicman, and this one has been better kept.At least I can save one more kustom for a owner who takes care of them. Happy new year to all!!!
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| Re: A dirty Kustom story! [message #2820 is a reply to message #2264] |
Thu, 12 June 2003 19:31  |
QModer
Messages: 413
Registered: June 2003
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Senior Member |
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At least the cover box for the old head will probably be good and maybe some of the knobs and such. I had a keyboard once that rats had got into and stripped very wire bare. I even went out and cranked one my old muscle cars I had'nt driven in a while. It cranked backfired and out of one of the tail pipes went this rat nest. I understand now why Kustom had Kustom cats as a mascot. Sorry could'nt resist. But for years I trapped, shot and poisoned this pests. I have woods and fields all around me. after that I got a cat and have kept one all my life since. I'm not a big cat lover or anything but had much rather have them than a fat fury rat.
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