In this episode I kick off a brand-new questionable life choice: taking one of the most hated amps on the internet—the Crate BV120H “Blue Voodoo” (aka Blue DooDoo)—and using it as a donor to build a 100-watt hand-wired monster inspired by the mythical S.I.R. 36 modded Marshall 2203 that Slash ended up using on Appetite for Destruction. This isn’t going to be a direct clone, but the goal is absolutely in that neighborhood. I talk through why I pivoted from building another Rob Robinette-style SLO clone after my “drilled the chassis wrong” incident, and how I realized the SLO and the SIR 36 live on the same basic topology—different values, same bones. Before I start gutting anything, I actually test the Blue Voodoo as an amp. Clean channel: tons of headroom, but harsh/ice-picky unless you’re brave enough to crank the EQ in weird directions. Dirty channel: usable, loud, and very much “it does the thing it was designed to do,” even if it’s not exactly refined. Then I pull up the schematic and walk through what Crate did here—Fender-ish structure with a couple back-to-back high gain stages stuffed in the middle, optocoupler switching, op-amp loop/reverb, and a 2203-style pre-phase-inverter master volume. Finally, I get into the teardown prep: cabinet/chassis construction, transformer wire color mapping, discovering a bonus 4-ohm OT tap, measuring inrush voltage, identifying the inrush current limiter part, and calling out safety-rated line caps (X/Y). Part 1 is basically reconnaissance: what this amp really is, how it’s built, and what I can reuse before the real surgery begins.