KISS Principle

I’ve had an old Marshall MS-2 guitar amplifier for ... Probably 30 years. Maybe longer. The other day I went to fire it up and it was dead. Okay, swapped in a brand new 9V battery. Nope, still dead. Hmm. Take it apart to see if there’s anything obviously wrong. Doesn’t appear to be. Dig out the cheap Harbor Freight multimeter I have handy (I have a low end Fluke, but not here), and do a quick continuity check. Everything looks good. Before I dive into the circuit board, I turn to Google University to see what the masses might have discussed regarding common failure points on this little guy. Sure enough, the first thing I found was the answer: The 9V connection, while looking fine, had gotten a bit loose. Simply bending the connection prongs out a bit fixed the issue immediately. (Just as well; I needed an easy win.)