So travelling to London proved to be more difficult than I thought. Scheduled to leave at 11.40am, we didn’t even leave till 4pm. All due to rubbish weather in London City, so had to land in Standsted and train in. The weather was bad enough that on the approach I didn’t see the runway till we were about 15m above it!

Sorted the rail system out and ended up at Amy’s place, where I pretty much dropped all my stuff and we went and got Byron Burgers and a beers.

Day 29

So first day in London to do things and it was so nice to realise that I wasn’t obligated to do all the usual tourist stuff as I did it last time. So a quick email to dad the days before and a phone call and I was going to THE Marhsall Amplification Factory to do a factory tour.

It was a good 1h45m train ride there and Bletchley / Milton Keynes was in the middle of nowhere. The your consisted of just myself and two others.

We started off in the PCB/Handwired area where they had automated machines putting in 500pcs in every board in a few minutes. And also the handwired area for all the reissue areas.

Next we walked through into the covering and finishing area where they were doing all the tolex, piping, grill clothe and cabinet work.

 

 

The place smelt fine as they have dropped using the toxic glue for water based glue. Just means that it has to go into a 9kW oven to make the glue activate. We even spotted some “those don’t exist yet” cabinets.

Next was the woodworking area which we weren’t allowed to walk to far into, but the extracting is so good that no one needs to wear masks even using the routers and sanders.

At least in the UK factory, everything is made of Ply not MDF or particle board.

 

 

The JVM trolly.

They even had a “Marshall” coffee machine.

 

All the british made amps go through one guy that test everything. He was said to have the single most important job.

 

The shipping department was pretty cool, they even had riser boxes made up for UK stores to put stacks of amps on to make them a bit bigger.

One of the last areas we went to was a place they didn’t know what to do with when they brought the second factory. So they turned it into a jam/function room and a room for artists to go and test all sorts of new gear.

There was a story the guy told us about Angus Young. I got the boys to setup a wall of amps and walked around the factory floor playing guitar. The B&O (like Bunnings back home), that was through a factory, across a dual carriage way, and in another warehouse laid a noise complaint. The guy said they just didn’t know good music.

Finished up with a look at the museum, a few photos and I grabbed the last T-shirt they had.

Even someone’s Mclaren was parked up outside. Our tour guide joked “it must be the I.T guys, he’s the only one that makes enough money here”

Finished up the night with a catch up with Kamal from my tour. Got dinner at an Italian place and a beer at Vodka Revolution. Was pretty good day. And I didn’t even get lost.