I knew that there was some monkey business with the faceplate as the cheesy stencil lettering and glued-on Marshall logo weren't fooling anyone. It took me quite a while to figure out what it actually was, which is a CMI (Cleartone Musical Instruments) 100w PA head. CMI has a connection with Marshall in the 1970s roughly similar to that of Park amps - basically Marshall was under license to only sell through one shop in the UK and these were outside the radar enough that nobody cared (or noticed) so they could be sold at other stores. They resemble current-at-the-time offerings from Marshall in many cases although there are a few differences.
But I didn't know that at the time. I thought I was looking at one of these:
Looking through the Doyle book, I found a scan that was provided to the author by Steve at Angela's Instruments which finally gave me my "EUREKA !!" moment:
So now I knew what it had originally looked like and I could start down the path of restoration. I finally got around (somewhat nervously) to taking it out of its case last week at long, long last to see what awaited me inside. The good news is that the horrible exterior mods weren't replicated inside, and (at least to these non-expert eyes) things look to be pretty much intact. Lotsa chassis photos including some of the front where the moron had superglued a Marshall emblem in place & stenciled in the numbers and a curiously-named "marster" volume control:
http://www.hadton.com/amps/cmi/CMI_PA100W/
I was able to get some basic photos of the 50w version from an eBay auction a month or two ago so I have a good starting point for redoing the front panel and the cabinet (which will lose its black carpet tolex pronto!) up to original appearance.
I have no idea how many people (if any) will be interested in this long, rambling story but we all have our long-term projects and I'm just happier than the proverbial pig in poo that I've finally got this started.
