Building Guitar Amps

PaulBrewer

I'm thinking about building a Guitar Amp or two. Just the Head for recording , with very low wattage, maybe 5 or 10.

Do any of you Gentle Folk have any experience or suggestions ?

progsound

It will cost you more to build than to buy and is not super easy to do id only go down this route if you realy want to learn how amps work or something

PaulBrewer

progsound wrote: »

It will cost you more to build than to buy

Have you evidence ?

progsound

PaulBrewer wrote: »

Have you evidence ?

What like receipts ha no look at it this way man there is no way you are going to achieve the same economies of scale that amp building companys will achieve and parts like power transformers are pretty expensive add to this that its your first build so chance are you might fry some parts by accident or mess up here and there also you will need to buy measurment equipment to test the amp which is by no means cheap and you will have to run tests on a live amp with more than enough juice flowing through it to turn you into a human light bulb (which is never nice). So now your thinking well im saving on the labour aspect right ...... Wrong as the saying goes time is money baby and the hours upon hours of research and studying + actual build time you will spend on building this amp could have been spent mixing recording bands @ whatever you charge per hour so your opertunity cost of labour will be pretty high.

So if you are doing this project soley to save money id forget about it. However it would be a very interesting fun project to undertake so dont let the cost thing throw you off.

What kind of gain structure are you going for? There are a number of schematics available on the interwebs for small 5/10 watt valve amps with varying amounts of gain on tap the orange tiny terror is a great little amp might i sugest you try a clone build of that amp?

fruvai

PaulBrewer wrote: »

I'm thinking about building a Guitar Amp or two. Just the Head for recording , with very low wattage, maybe 5 or 10.

Do any of you Gentle Folk have any experience or suggestions ?

Check out some Ceriatone kits:

www.ceriatone.com

sei046

Brewer! Will you finish one build first! Get them Ns10,000s out!

Seziertisch

AFAIK guitar amp circuits are relatively simple. If you have electronics know-how already you should be able to fly through it.

Sourcing the parts shouldn't be particularly difficult (Ceriatone for example, although the parts are probably available cheaper elsewhere, but that depends on how you value spending a day or your time getting in contact with various companies sourcing the parts), and if you make an effort to go for better quality parts (including wiring) you will have an amp at the end which is far better than most regular production ones.

It makes more sense if you start with the explicit aim to build it with the best of everything. In which case, the argument about it not being worth it compared to a shop bought one goes out the window. Anyone who has had the chance to compare a good quality point-to-point amp with its pcb equivalent knows that there is just a level of tonefulness that is missing on most production models. Also, hand-wired production amp models are not exactly cheap.

I had a guy build me a hand-wired Deluxe Reverb clone. He built it for cost plus labour and charged me 800 yo-yos, which was a pretty good deal. The same thing from Fender (if they offered it) based on the prices of their other hand-wired models would have cost at least twice that.

PaulBrewer

Thank you for your encouragement.

What like receipts ha

It was you who brought up the subject, so some evidence to back up such a bold statement would be nice.

no look at it this way man there is no way you are going to achieve the same economies of scale that amp building companys will achieve and parts like power transformers are pretty expensive

Unlike most gigging amps, my requirements are different, namely low power and tonal quality. Economies of scale don't come into the equation as, per your example, while transformers for 100 watt amp may be expensive ones for 5 watt amps are much cheaper.

add to this that its your first build so chance are you might fry some parts by accident or mess up here and there also you will need to buy measurment equipment to test the amp which is by no means cheap and you will have to run tests on a live amp with more than enough juice flowing through it to turn you into a human light bulb (which is never nice).

Back in the days shortly after the ESB invented Electricity I studied Electronics. Whilst I've not built a guitar amp, I have built a PA i.e. Mixer, Multicore and Amps and some guitar FX.

So now your thinking well im saving on the labour aspect right

No ...

as the saying goes time is money baby and the hours upon hours of research and studying + actual build time you will spend on building this amp could have been spent mixing recording bands @ whatever you charge per hour so your opertunity cost of labour will be pretty high.

ZZZZZZZ, that's the sound of me snoozing. I'm only interested in a kit of which there are many as Mr.Google tells me.

So if you are doing this project soley to save money id forget about it.

ZZZZZZZZZ

What kind of gain structure are you going for? There are a number of schematics available on the interwebs for small 5/10 watt valve amps with varying amounts of gain on tap the orange tiny terror is a great little amp might i sugest you try a clone build of that amp?

I'm thinking of getting a Tiny Terror ok. As usual I know a man ...

In the meantime I just bought this on Ebay

PaulBrewer

fruvai wrote: »

Check out some Ceriatone kits:

www.ceriatone.com

Thank you! I'd not seen these.
Have you built one? Any good?

PaulBrewer

Seziertisch wrote: »

I had a guy build me a hand-wired Deluxe Reverb clone. He built it for cost plus labour and charged me 800 yo-yos, which was a pretty good deal. The same thing from Fender (if they offered it) based on the prices of their other hand-wired models would have cost at least twice that.

What? 800 Euro Bucks? That's very cheap....

Have you many amplificators ? If you have ome down to Clara and I'll organise a free day for you if you take down all your gear.

We'll spend a day messing about and you can spend another day recording...

PaulBrewer

sei046 wrote: »

Brewer! Will you finish one build first! Get them Ns10,000s out!

All done, burning the feckers in .... they're settling down very nicely.

PaulBrewer

I spotted these guys too ...

http://www.evatco.com.au/sonic.htm

Seziertisch

I've that and a Henriksen Jazzamp. I have quite a bit of other guitar gear, ranging from vintage to very obscure, and all me axes are heavily customised. Speaking of which, do yourselves a favour and check out singlecoil.com .

I sourced some silvercore and NOS vintage cloth wire from here for my guitars. The final piece in the tonal puzzle. A rewire with a combination of both quite literally transformed the lot of them (bearing in mind I already had replacement pickups in all of them). It seems to have shifted the resonant frequency. Gone are all those nasty plastic resonances. The seem to have more of the good treble and mid while the stuff you have to filter out when recording is gone in a lot of cases. The vintage cloth wire really has the magic, and seems to eq the sound to vintage specs, rolling off the top and thickening the mids.

Dirk from Singlecoil also told me about winding two wires together for the hot signal as a way to shield the cable. This also has quite a good effect tonally, leading to greater clarity, string definition and balance. This is the same principle that Vovox cables apply. Dirk is friends with the guy from Voxox so it is possible that that is where he has it from.

As for the invite, I'll definitely take you up on it sometime sooner rather than later. I'll be in touch. I could also probably get a nice late 60's black-faced silverface Fender head for the trip down.

PaulBrewer

Seziertisch wrote: »

I've that and a Henriksen Jazzamp. I have quite a bit of other guitar gear, ranging from vintage to very obscure, and all me axes are heavily customised. Speaking of which, do yourselves a favour and check out singlecoil.com .

I sourced some silvercore and NOS vintage cloth wire from here for my guitars. The final piece in the tonal puzzle. A rewire with a combination of both quite literally transformed the lot of them (bearing in mind I already had replacement pickups in all of them). It seems to have shifted the resonant frequency. Gone are all those nasty plastic resonances. The seem to have more of the good treble and mid while the stuff you have to filter out when recording is gone in a lot of cases. The vintage cloth wire really has the magic, and seems to eq the sound to vintage specs, rolling off the top and thickening the mids.

Dirk from Singlecoil also told me about winding two wires together for the hot signal as a way to shield the cable. This also has quite a good effect tonally, leading to greater clarity, string definition and balance. This is the same principle that Vovox cables apply. Dirk is friends with the guy from Voxox so it is possible that that is where he has it from.

As for the invite, I'll definitely take you up on it sometime sooner rather than later. I'll be in touch. I could also probably get a nice late 60's black-faced silverface Fender head for the trip down.

Jeez yer some Geek!

The twisting wires thing is an old trick, the principal that the twist balances out the noise so for every + bit of noise added there's a corresponding - added in the next twist thereby canceling ... well I think that's the case anywus.

I'd never considered rewiring the Axes actually, perhaps it should be put on the 'I wonder if I did that ....' list to try!

My interest is in getting 'interesting' noises as opposed to 'classic' ones hence my Piebald Guitar Collection. As I type I'm listening to Friendly Fires new Long Player which has a collection of 'piebald' guitar tones.

http://viewmorepics.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewPicture&friendID=356185163&albumId=484870

Sounding a bit of a Geek myself, innit?

Seziertisch

It makes sense though.

I mean you have a guitar that costs quite a lot, an amp that costs quite a lot, all connected up with decent quality cable that probably wasn't cheap either, and then inside the guitar (depending on how its wired) you have a couple of feet (and a couple of cents worth) of the ****est cabling imaginable. And this at the very beginning of the chain.

I though it might make a difference but it completely changed the resonant frequency. My old go-to eq settings on the amps were out the window.

No dipping in with eqs to try and get rid of certain frequencies which at the same time as being the problem are also the focus of the body of the sound. A couple of quids worth of cable and a bit of work for what is quite a big difference.

PaulBrewer

Seziertisch wrote: »

It makes sense though.

I mean you have a guitar that costs quite a lot, an amp that costs quite a lot, all connected up with decent quality cable that probably wasn't cheap either, and then inside the guitar (depending on how its wired) you have a couple of feet (and a couple of cents worth) of the ****est cabling imaginable. And this at the very beginning of the chain.

I though it might make a difference but it completely changed the resonant frequency. My old go-to eq settings on the amps were out the window.

No dipping in with eqs to try and get rid of certain frequencies which at the same time as being the problem are also the focus of the body of the sound. A couple of quids worth of cable and a bit of work for what is quite a big difference.

It does indeed make sense ....

A long time a go I came to the conclusion - EVERYTHING matters!

I personally don't like experimenting much on a session. I prefer to work as much as possible quickly and experiment when the Band Time Clock ain't ticking ...

Hence my invite!

progsound

PaulBrewer wrote: »

Thank you for your encouragement.


It was you who brought up the subject, so some evidence to back up such a bold statement would be nice.



Unlike most gigging amps, my requirements are different, namely low power and tonal quality. Economies of scale don't come into the equation as, per your example, while transformers for 100 watt amp may be expensive ones for 5 watt amps are much cheaper.



Back in the days shortly after the ESB invented Electricity I studied Electronics. Whilst I've not built a guitar amp, I have built a PA i.e. Mixer, Multicore and Amps and some guitar FX.

No ...


ZZZZZZZ, that's the sound of me snoozing. I'm only interested in a kit of which there are many as Mr.Google tells me.

ZZZZZZZZZ



I'm thinking of getting a Tiny Terror ok. As usual I know a man ...

In the meantime I just bought this on Ebay

Fair enough bud

PaulBrewer

progsound wrote: »

Fair enough bud

Spose!

spoonbadger

PaulBrewer wrote: »

Thank you! I'd not seen these.
Have you built one? Any good?

I have!.

Well,actually i bought one of the chassis pre-assembled from the Ceriatone guys, a marshall JTM45 copy.

It sounds godly!!. Best amp i've ever played, with insane amounts of response and tone.

The wiring/components are top notch, the soldering and layour are perfect (no manky joints or spaghetti cabling) and it's built like a tank!!. You could throw this off a building, replace the tubes and pretend nothing happened .

Speaking of ceriatone, the chassis i bought from them (with all the best components/valves etc.) cost me 600E inc. shipping. The cabinet and celestion G12-65 i bought for it cost me roughly a total of 400E inc. shipping. So the total price of my DIY bluesbreaker combo was about a grand....

....the marshall equivalent (reissue bluesbreaker) costs about 2400E i think.

What were you saying about D-I-Y amps always costing more progsound? :P;).

PaulBrewer

Cool! I'm glad to see the amps are better than their website!

So, to clarify, the amp you got was ready built? With or without a Cabinet (amp cab as opposed to speaker cab) was that including Irish Vat?

It seems to me from what I've heard, is that the 'average' branded amp is very average and the 'boutique' branded amps are too expensive to accumulate a collection as one might like.

Perhaps the best solution is a kit-amp , either self or factory built?

spoonbadger wrote: »

I have!.

Well,actually i bought one of the chassis pre-assembled from the Ceriatone guys, a marshall JTM45 copy.

It sounds godly!!. Best amp i've ever played, with insane amounts of response and tone.

The wiring/components are top notch, the soldering and layour are perfect (no manky joints or spaghetti cabling) and it's built like a tank!!. You could throw this off a building, replace the tubes and pretend nothing happened .

Speaking of ceriatone, the chassis i bought from them (with all the best components/valves etc.) cost me 600E inc. shipping. The cabinet and celestion G12-65 i bought for it cost me roughly a total of 400E inc. shipping. So the total price of my DIY bluesbreaker combo was about a grand....

....the marshall equivalent (reissue bluesbreaker) costs about 2400E i think.

What were you saying about D-I-Y amps always costing more progsound? :P;).

progsound

spoonbadger wrote: »

I have!.

Well,actually i bought one of the chassis pre-assembled from the Ceriatone guys, a marshall JTM45 copy.

It sounds godly!!. Best amp i've ever played, with insane amounts of response and tone.

The wiring/components are top notch, the soldering and layour are perfect (no manky joints or spaghetti cabling) and it's built like a tank!!. You could throw this off a building, replace the tubes and pretend nothing happened .

Speaking of ceriatone, the chassis i bought from them (with all the best components/valves etc.) cost me 600E inc. shipping. The cabinet and celestion G12-65 i bought for it cost me roughly a total of 400E inc. shipping. So the total price of my DIY bluesbreaker combo was about a grand....

....the marshall equivalent (reissue bluesbreaker) costs about 2400E i think.

What were you saying about D-I-Y amps always costing more progsound? :P;).

I assumed he was going to build the amp himself not a pre assembled kit type package. But it seems to be working out nicely for so fair play.

How much work do ya have to put into the kit when you get it?

iquinn

PaulBrewer wrote: »

Cool! I'm glad to see the amps are better than their website!

So, to clarify, the amp you got was ready built? With or without a Cabinet (amp cab as opposed to speaker cab) was that including Irish Vat?

It seems to me from what I've heard, is that the 'average' branded amp is very average and the 'boutique' branded amps are too expensive to accumulate a collection as one might like.

Perhaps the best solution is a kit-amp , either self or factory built?

a friend of mine has built a few valve amps, i think using some form of kit as a base, I'll get some info from him and pass it on. They sound excellent.

spoonbadger

progsound wrote: »

I assumed he was going to build the amp himself not a pre assembled kit type package. But it seems to be working out nicely for so fair play.

How much work do ya have to put into the kit when you get it?

Well if you buy the parts as an unassembled kit,i think it'd be just mounting the eyelet board in the chassis, mounting the transformers,knobs, and other off-board components and wiring it all up, afaik.

I had to put eff-all effort in, apart from sourcing/buying the cabinet and speakers, then drilling 4 holes in the back panel in the cab to mount it. Good times .

ruairiw

As IQuinn says I've built a few, repaired a few. I built a 5/7 watt kit from http://www.ampmaker.com/index.asp. Nice little kit where you have to do all the soldering onto the supplied point-to-point board. Excellent for the first time builder as it gives detailed instructions on each stage of construction and includes all the parts and an aluminium chassis. Excellent quality sound and I built a little 3ply birch cabinet with a 8' Jenson speaker to stick it in.
I also got an 18watt tremelo kit from Ceriatone. Comes with all the parts soldered onto the board and used my own tubes and a transformer I had. So Ceriatone is excellent if you want to skip the soldering of all the caps/resistors. The board comes with everything soldered and a bunch of colour coded wires hanging off it which you solder to the correct knobs on your chassis etc. No detailed instructions, just a colour coded schematic and plan but Nik the owner is very helpful, helped me figure out why the Tremelo wasn't working; turned out it needed an old 12ax7 tube to get the tremelo tremoling as it were. https://taweber.powweb.com/store/kits.htm have a good reputation for kits, again no detailed instructions and more expensive then Ceriatone but the transformers are better than the Ceriatone ones I read somewhere and maybe the caps too are better quality. Which may be important for higher power amps (with push-pull 2 tube power stages (18watt and higher)) but I dont know if it matters much for a 5/7 watt single power-tube amp.
Anyways I'd recommend Ceriatone specially since they do some of the dirty board soldering for you so you can just finish it off and it will only take 2 days to finish compared to a week spent soldering all the components. And the postage of the kit isn't expensive.
It does take more time and can cost more money then buying a stock little fender off the shelf but the sound is far better, lush and rich. And if you're careful with the twisted heating wiring and shielded signal wires and star ground connections then there'll be little or no noise and will record nicely.
R.

120_Minutes

Paul do you still requier the services of my 69 superbass/79 superlead and 79 park 4x12?

(I'm just looking for a reason to gatecrash this amp party...and i can byob)

dav nagle

PaulBrewer

ruairiw wrote: »

As IQuinn says I've built a few, repaired a few. I built a 5/7 watt kit from http://www.ampmaker.com/index.asp. Nice little kit where you have to do all the soldering onto the supplied point-to-point board. Excellent for the first time builder as it gives detailed instructions on each stage of construction and includes all the parts and an aluminium chassis. Excellent quality sound and I built a little 3ply birch cabinet with a 8' Jenson speaker to stick it in.
I also got an 18watt tremelo kit from Ceriatone. Comes with all the parts soldered onto the board and used my own tubes and a transformer I had. So Ceriatone is excellent if you want to skip the soldering of all the caps/resistors. The board comes with everything soldered and a bunch of colour coded wires hanging off it which you solder to the correct knobs on your chassis etc. No detailed instructions, just a colour coded schematic and plan but Nik the owner is very helpful, helped me figure out why the Tremelo wasn't working; turned out it needed an old 12ax7 tube to get the tremelo tremoling as it were. https://taweber.powweb.com/store/kits.htm have a good reputation for kits, again no detailed instructions and more expensive then Ceriatone but the transformers are better than the Ceriatone ones I read somewhere and maybe the caps too are better quality. Which may be important for higher power amps (with push-pull 2 tube power stages (18watt and higher)) but I dont know if it matters much for a 5/7 watt single power-tube amp.
Anyways I'd recommend Ceriatone specially since they do some of the dirty board soldering for you so you can just finish it off and it will only take 2 days to finish compared to a week spent soldering all the components. And the postage of the kit isn't expensive.
It does take more time and can cost more money then buying a stock little fender off the shelf but the sound is far better, lush and rich. And if you're careful with the twisted heating wiring and shielded signal wires and star ground connections then there'll be little or no noise and will record nicely.
R.

Twas that little ampmaker one I was thinking off to start with. Thanks for your post Ruari.

PaulBrewer

dav nagle wrote: »

Well put Dav ....

henessjon

Seziertisch wrote: »

I've that and a Henriksen Jazzamp. I have quite a bit of other guitar gear, ranging from vintage to very obscure, and all me axes are heavily customised. Speaking of which, do yourselves a favour and check out singlecoil.com .

I sourced some silvercore and NOS vintage cloth wire from here for my guitars. The final piece in the tonal puzzle. A rewire with a combination of both quite literally transformed the lot of them (bearing in mind I already had replacement pickups in all of them). It seems to have shifted the resonant frequency. Gone are all those nasty plastic resonances. The seem to have more of the good treble and mid while the stuff you have to filter out when recording is gone in a lot of cases. The vintage cloth wire really has the magic, and seems to eq the sound to vintage specs, rolling off the top and thickening the mids.

Dirk from Singlecoil also told me about winding two wires together for the hot signal as a way to shield the cable. This also has quite a good effect tonally, leading to greater clarity, string definition and balance. This is the same principle that Vovox cables apply. Dirk is friends with the guy from Voxox so it is possible that that is where he has it from.

As for the invite, I'll definitely take you up on it sometime sooner rather than later. I'll be in touch. I could also probably get a nice late 60's black-faced silverface Fender head for the trip down.

yes this where I am heading for my homebrew tele...

any other advice or schematic diagram would help.... I havent checked that web site out yet (scuse my ignornance)

henessjon

PaulBrewer wrote: »

Well put Dav ....

that wuld be cisco data traffic then !!!!


bah picture is missin!!!

PaulBrewer

Got that 18 Watt head, it's monster. The Clean tone is monstrous through a 4 x 12 . Burning in the ole valves.

Does anyone know how long that should be for new valves?

Stephen!

Kinda off topic, but didn't wanna clog up the forum with a single question.

If I bought a new head, can I unplug the cables going from my speakers into the head part of my current combo and plug them into the new head I buy, while I save for a cab?

PaulBrewer

Stephen! wrote: »

Kinda off topic, but didn't wanna clog up the forum with a single question.

If I bought a new head, can I unplug the cables going from my speakers into the head part of my current combo and plug them into the new head I buy, while I save for a cab?

Yes, once the speaker impedance is the same as your amp requires.

johnboy8

'madamp' do a nice little 2watter volume and tone amp that costs99euro.simple little circut.

PaulBrewer

johnboy8 wrote: »

'madamp' do a nice little 2watter volume and tone amp that costs99euro.simple little circut.

Johnny Boy, Thanks !

sei046

Paul any chance of laying down a few chords or something on the 18 watter some day your in the studio. Would love to hear how these amps sound and cannot stand the sounds lads put up on youtube

if6was9

A mate of mine built an 18 watter marshall clone about 6 months ago, turned out really nice, he built it mainly from a kit but modded the circuit to include a cascade section involving the tubes.
he recently bought one of those cheap low wattage epiphone valve amps on the net, gutted it apart from the transformer and put a completely different circuit into it with a boost switch. Its kinda like an orange tiny terror. I've got it at my house for a few days I can record clips if ye want, did a few already but I can make better ones. It's very nice, got a great clean and just breaking tone for bluesy type stuff

PaulBrewer

sei046 wrote: »

Paul any chance of laying down a few chords or something on the 18 watter some day your in the studio. Would love to hear how these amps sound and cannot stand the sounds lads put up on youtube

Yes, I'll get Joe to play some Bluesy nonsense that he's into ...

jimmy99

The quickest way to learn how to build a small tube amp is to buy an epiphone valve junior amp,and then buy one of the mercury magnetics upgrade kit.If your handy with a soldering iron you should not have a problem.

PaulBrewer

Thanks ....

I've since bought a built 18 watt Clone and a Matamp Minimat ..... the soldering iron is still cold!

Seziertisch

jimmy99 wrote: »

The quickest way to learn how to build a small tube amp is to buy an epiphone valve junior amp,and then buy one of the mercury magnetics upgrade kit.If your handy with a soldering iron you should not have a problem.

The Mercury mod isn't supposed to be the easiest in this case. I think it requires circuit board etching and other stuff well beyond that of a novice.

Seziertisch

sei046 wrote: »

Paul any chance of laying down a few chords or something on the 18 watter some day your in the studio. Would love to hear how these amps sound and cannot stand the sounds lads put up on youtube

Check out proguitarshop.com. They have good demos of lots of gear (properly recorded). They do one of the Marshall 1974x (the reissue of the original 18 watter, although supposedly Marshall originally acquired the circuit from WEM).

PaulBrewer

Seziertisch wrote: »

Check out proguitarshop.com. They have good demos of lots of gear (properly recorded). They do one of the Marshall 1974x (the reissue of the original 18 watter, although supposedly Marshall originally acquired the circuit from WEM).

I must give you a go on my 18 watter, best thing I've ever heard ...

Seziertisch

A mate of mine has the Marshall one. Very nice. Jumpering the channels results in some really creamy Diamond Dogs style break up.