Awesome, you've really given me a lot to digest.

I see what you're talking about regarding point-to-point.  I was looking at my amp last night and just thinking to myself it looks like I'll have to disassemble the entire chassis to get to that jack.  The estimate from the repair shop is $60 if it is indeed a bad solder on that jack. $60 and who knows how long without my amp is not to my liking,  so I figure I'll give it a shot myself. I'll practice my soldering on some random junk I've got lying around and see what I can do, worst case I utterly screw it up and I've gotta buy a new amp. The amp is only worth ~100 new so I figure its double or nothing here.

Awesome, thanks a million man.  I'm gonna have him check it out.  I'm also gonna try to learn a bit sos I can troubleshoot this sort of thing myself in the future.  I never really thought about how my amp worked but its pretty interesting now that I've been forced to do so.  I know a little about reading electronic schematics and whatnot (my major field of study is Computer Science), but not knowing anything about amps I didn't wanna go screwin around with it as I know what problems that sort of thing can cause for PCs.  

I've done some basic soldering and whatnot in the past, you think this is something I'll likely be ok with?

Again thanks a ton, the info you gave is priceless.  As you said a tech would charge me a lot of money (rightfully) and I'd walk away knowing little to nothing more than I did before my amp broke.

Oh and you said that amps built like this are sort of time bombs....is there anything you would recommend I look for in an amp to ensure longevity?  Given I bought this thing used in '00, I think 7 years is pretty good, but just for the sake of knowin.

Ok, the cord is the same and all.  I took the cord out of the tuner and plugged it directly into the amp from the guitar.

I've screwed around with the volume knobs on the guitar (2...Epiphone Special), set em both low, high, one low, one high (the reversed), nothing changes at all.  The volume knobs are a bit loose, I'm not sure why, but its like whatever is keeping them attached to the body is a bit loose...possible problem?

Upon setting reverb to 10 and givin my amp a punch, I get a sound reminiscent of a crappy laser sound effect like you might see in Star Wars or somethin.

I seem to remember getting some sort of audio cue from the amp when I plugged my guitar in, like the hiss would change a bit or something (can't quite recall now though), that does not happen now (could be I'm remembering something that isn't there I guess).

I have an acoustic but it just ain't the same.

Thanks for the assistance though guys, I'll keep checkin back.

So I just got back into playing guitar, been playing for ~2 weeks now and....my amp just up n stopped working on me.

As far as I know nothing happened to it, nothing hit it, spilled on it, dropped it, nothing.

This is a small practice-type Fender Bullet Reverb (I can go down to the basement and get specifics if you guys need em I'm just lazy :p).

I sat down and tuned my guitar using the cable plugged into a battery powered tuner, so I'm assuming the cable and hardware on the guitar itself are ok and this problem is with my amp.    I turn my power switch on, light comes on and I can hear the faint hiss amps normally makes when it is on, it gets louder if I turn the volume on the amp up (always normal amp noise as far as I know, very faint), and it gets a bit more intense if I turn on the distortion, but playing the guitar (yes I plugged it into the amp :p) produces no sound whatsoever.

I went ahead and opened it up and everything looks ok, like there aren't any obvious poor connections on the inside and no obvious physical damage, but beyond that I don't know what to do here.  Please help.