Mesa Mark II C (sp10a) export

[74-335]

Okay...

This little box of rock came to me via FB, and for the $ I was smitten at the time.
played fine, sounded like it had DC on the input, so I thought "when I have time..."

Well redundancy has a way of prompting one to find something to do, apart from looking for work.
After almost 2 decades of service and being given the heave-ho, I have found a few projects...

Project is what we'll call this, because it needs some serious TLC.

I'll start with a few pics, and post a few more, then leave it for the commenters to chime in, because After a secondary glance over the internals, I am actually on the fence about the commitment and time this may take, and given the "cult" status of this particular boogie, I'm almost wanting to condemn it to the "hall of fame" aka a place on the shelf where you can look at it but not touch (because it's not worth fixing  / too far gone / originality police etc).

Of course it's repairable. But it needs a complete R&R by my rekoning.

[74-335]

Some more detail pictures for amusement.

Maybe I am bonkers. I've been giving some really serious thought to redesigning the PCB's, which will obviously completely devalue the amp, but actually make it decent.

Those who know, know what I mean by this.
You can see from the detail shots why. (here goes more images).

[74-335]

I may live to eat my own words on this, but what the heck...

This amp was a one-owner.
Gigged with it for a few decades, bought a vibrasonic reverb silverface and then shelved the boogie.

returned to the boogie relatively recently but it's playing up, so took it to our local music store who offered peanuts or a huge repair bill...  so back to the vibrasonic and the boogie finds a space on FB marketplace is where it found it's way to me.

I went to see the guy, had a discussion, offered a fair price given what I was told.
Yes, it was demo'd at the time and it was a little bit noisy, but nothing I wasn't sure of.

It's sat in my room for a bit. I have to admit, I'm not a mesa guy - at the outset. I like my F/M/V's and the occasional Hiwatt or other clean pedal platform amp. but this little wicker grille box just screamed 'take me home' and I was in a moment of weakness.

A long time work colleague and good friend actually is the "mesa guy" and knows them inside out, so when I told him his first words were send me a gutshot.... and the response to the images was laughter.

He said easy repair,  but since the second glance and noticing the lifting tracks on the output tube pcb, I'm really feeling like I want to redesign a PCB with much heavier tracks, better ground plane and a better layout.

That is the bit that is eating at me.  I am the originality police when it comes to my own gear, but for the sake of fixing others, I am all for reliable long service life and don't skimp on quality components.

I know I could achieve both, but with the price of these things now being so ridiculous, I have to actually consider the position of the originality police, and a clean/replace at individual component level and leave as much in as can be tolerated.

Luckily my former colleague has a few NOS bits n pieces to help maintain the "originality", but I also realize this is not the dreaded RP-10a or EQ-tone destroyer holy grail IIc++  and that I feel might give me some leeway on the "how far do you go" - because I am sure I could easily make it better than new, simply with better PCB layout and fresh components - but then anyone who looks inside is going to guilt me.

I know I shouldnt care, but something tells me that I need to preserve the character - as flawed as it currently is.

[AlNewman]

It looks to me that that amp has been gone through a few times already.  I'm not sure it would qualify as a museum piece, unless it has a tie to some famous artist/recording. 
Those old PCB's aren't bad, but they are fragile.  I've found they aren't bad to repair a couple damaged traces.  The traces are solid, but not attached to the board very well.  Too much time spent with your iron, too much heat, or trying to remove parts without proper prep and they'll come off like spaghetti.  Normally you try to limit the times you fix your own mistakes.  But, to me, that amp looks like it has been "fixed" before, and you don't know what the last guy did. 

[acheld]

My personal bias would be to take it apart just enough to get to those traces -- eg, boards out of the chassis for sure. You could fix those traces by embedding wire in them where necessary, and then "glueing" them to the board with solder mask as needed.  It wouldn't be "original", but you'd keep the basic philosophy of the design.   And there seem to be more than a few high quality components present.

On the other hand, re-designing the PCBs would be fun too, and it sounds like you have the skillset for this based on your other posts.

In any event, this amp is not a "forever" amp in its current state, so it's going to be modified at some point anyway.