Hi All:

I have a 1988 MIK Squier 15 (not a Champ), and I have opened it up in my very first attempt at amp repair/modification.

I am addressing 2 issues. The first one I think I can handle. The second one is over my head:

1. It has a wonderful Vox-esque clean tone but not enough headroom for strummed chords, even with the preamp set to "1", so I am gong to install a Bourns 500K trimpot inplace of R1 and adjust to taste.

2. I wonder, while I have this thing disassembled, if there is anything a newbie like me can do to improve the distortion on this thing.

It ALWAYS amazes me that there are so many great solid state distortion PEDALS but so few nicely distorting solid state AMPS. My favorite solid state distortion is from my 1968 Vox Nova, which generates its distortion by accident... it was never designed to distort, as it was built for horn players who wanted to compete with guitarists. This little guy thinks it's a plexi Marshall! But I digress... back to the Squier 15.

ANYWAY, can any of you guys give me any pointers?

thanks,
Tim