Zinky Superfly blog - Part 1: Introduction

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Once up a time I bought a used Zinky Superfly guitar amplifier.

This blog is the educational story of the perils of "boutique" gear as exemplified in the problems I have had; equipment that is so esoteric that if it develops a fault, only one person in the whole wide world can repair it. If they can be bothered...

I bought the amp through eBay UK on 25 January 2007. The amp chassis has spent the time between 29 April 2008 and 5 February 2010 in the workshop of Bruce Zinky. For the vast majority of that time, nothing has been done with it. For the details of how this ridiculous situation has evolved, read on...

In January 2007 I was wanting to down-size from a racked, MIDI-controlled stereo guitar rig (Marshall JMP-1, Alesis Quadraverb, Marshall 8008 and two Marshall 1912 cabinets) to a "one-box solution"; I saw the Superfly listed on eBay UK and it appeared to offer the benefit of 32 MIDI-selectable presets in a convenient combo format. Having read up about it on the Zinky web site at the above-mentioned link and some on-line reviews (Harmony Central has two pages, one for the head version and one for the combo version), I decided to bid.

The vendor lived only a couple of miles away, so when I found I'd won the auction with my opening bid (the only bid as it happened) I arranged to go round and collect it the same evening. So far, so simple.

The vendor assured me it was in full working order, and on first use that is exactly how it appeared - the sound was great on all the six "modes", far surpassing what I'd been able to get out of my Marshall rig. I went to bed a happy guy, but that wasn't to last - see part 2.