The Story of Lil King #114

Lil King #114 left my shop in West Asheville in 2008, I had already hit my stride with production at this point…It was my 5th year in business and things were going well

The guts of a chassis from 16 years ago, still looks identical to what I do today for the most part…wire routing, components, transformers, so you can usually rest assured that an old one will (or can be brought back to) perform as a new one.

BUT, #114 came to me from a gentleman named Joe in the Chicago area…He had found a blonde/ox little king with a 12 inch speaker in his area….a widow was selling it as it was her late husband’s only amp.

The price was fantastic so Joe went over and picked the amp up without even trying it out…everything he had read and heard about Headstrong gave him the confidence to do so, I must say…rightfully so!

When Joe got home, he tried to turn it on…nothing, no pilot light, no tubes lighting up, no sound….TOTALLY DEAD. He reached out to me and told me what was going on….I had him ship me just the chassis for inspection.

When I opened the box, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It appeared as though the transformer had blown, but instead of a normal, just you know a little bit of darkness around where the wires come out of the PT or maybe a weird smell something, there was basically the guts inside the transformer had sprayed all over the inside of the chassis. The whole thing was tobacco stained brown inside….Covering connections, the steel chassis, caps, resistors, everything!

I emailed to ask him about it and to have him Send me a picture of his cabinet… the inside top of the cabinet looked the same…big brown stains!

I’ve never seen a transformer blow like this. I’ve only had fewer than 10 blow in 21 years on all of my amps combined so this was puzzling. I reached out to a few techs that are far more knowledgeable than I, the consensus was basically, yeah, that happens but the amp should be fine. You might have to clean up a few connections etc, but it’ll be fine. 

Being honest, I had no interest in working on this chassis and it sat there for longer than I’d like to admit and I felt terrible about it, but I was so busy. I didn’t know how to handle it. I do have a lifetime warranty, but clearly this was some kind of massive malfunction, and I was worried about soldering around and on all of this residue that was left inside. I have ventilation here, but the smell of this….it wasn’t going to go well….

And then…

Well, as you probably know we had a natural disaster hit here in late September and I was down for 12 days or so but once I was back up and running Joe reached out wondering about the chassis and I’ll be honest with you, I was a little put off and I’m ashamed to say so because this is my job and I love it, but also because the storm has changed parts of me forever! What I used to consider an inconvenience or and issue, is a joke to me now! The stuff I have seen and still see everyday, that is a real issue! Not the stuff I make up to be…

Sorry, I am sticking to this, I am not going back to that!

WELL, this is point right here,

I explained to Joe that I just gotten back into the shop and just up and running and the situation and he nicely responded “yes I noticed on Facebook what you were going through and glad you are alright…”

And then he let me know his situation…

He had been diagnosed with advanced liver cancer in early July and was just wanting to spend as much time as he could playing his old trusty Tele and this cool amp that he found after hearing how great it was on Ask Zac and the like…

I was embarrassed and leveled! He wasn’t using this as some sort of retaliatory statement. He was just telling me his situation as I was telling him mine… After all I’d seen here at home, and knowing how lucky we were, I instantly knew what had to be done!

Rather than work on that chassis #114, I decided to keep it here as a reminder…. and Joe will get chassis number 861! A brand new chassis for the cost of some out of warranty work!

I built the chassis last week and this last weekend, I got an email from Joe. He had received the chassis on Sunday and with some apprehension fired it up!

He said he hadn’t played his guitar since he had gotten his cancer diagnosis and it felt so good just to plug in and play again

The point for me here is

There will always be somebody out there with a MUCH bigger struggle than the one you are in (or in some cases perceive you are in) and we should treat each day appropriately.

Sorry this one was so heavy guys, I had to get it out!

The next blog will go right back to the tech stuff, I promise

Raise a glass to Joe and his family tonight if you’d like!

 Thanks for helping me get to do what I love!!

Wayne