Ever wanted to build your own tube amp?

[BrownSound1]

I was fumbling through the Internet the other night when I ran across a project that I found a bit interesting, and that was building your own guitar amp. I thought about it for a bit, and I concluded that it would be good for guitarists to do this so they could better understand the inner workings of a tube amplifier. Personally, I know how they work, but for people who have no electronics background this would be a great opportunity. Just think, you'd get an idea of how your big amp works and at the same time, you could build a really cool recording or practice tube amp.

Check out the site: The AX84(tm) Homepage

I haven't built one of these yet, so I can't really say how the damn thing will do. However, I plan on building one of the models very soon. There are some sound clips on the site to give you an idea of what these little things sound like...and they have complete kits in which to build them from.

[Cathedral]

Hey, that is a killer idea cause i am pretty much tube stupid (i own a Peavey, lol)

My gear background is basically plug and play, and i was a supervisor in a cover shop and did exactly as the word suggests,
That's the vinyl and carpet covering job.
Hardware assembly
making grills for Redbear amps, Soldano, Sovtek and a host of lower end PA cabinets.

This is something i would love to learn and was the only reason i took electronics in high school.
Shame is that was never a project in school, lol, but i can assemble a circuit board like nododies business, lmmfao.

I saved that link to my favorites.

[twonabomber]

Originally posted by Cathedral
i took electronics in high school.

me too. haven't done too much with it since then, but it got me out of a lot of boring classes.

i'm thinking of building one of those 18-watters too. i found another board that has Marshall and Vox board kits, may have been a link on that site.

[Cathedral]

It was also a way to spend the last two years of high school in a vocational school, and what i remember most is the cosmotology students. that was where all the babes went to learn to cut hair, lol.

And to this day i wouldn't let anyone who took it there cut my hair.

It was almost like a scene out of "An Officer and A Gentleman".

"Mr. Baker, Why are you taking this course?"

"I wanna build amps, sir!"

Then it degenerated into more of a "Stripes" thing, lol.

[BrownSound1]

I did the same thing guys....electronics in high school, then college, and I have to deal with that shit every day. In the work fields I deal with robotics and automation.

I remember telling my instructor in high school the exact same thing about building amps...and I've yet to do it. My father is as knowledgeable about tube circuits as anyone I've ever met...so I'm going to tap that resource for this project.

[Nitro Express]

I built a home brew version of a Fender Bassman. I even bent the metal chassis myself. I used to build Heathkit projects growing up. My dad was a tottal Ham Radio geek, so he taught me a lot about electronics and has a fabulouse work bench and tools to use.

Right now we live in such a throw away society and it's getting to the point where people don't know how to fix anything. If your Line 6 POD breaks, you throw it away and buy something new. If your Marshall Plexi breaks you took it to a repair shop. Repair shops are dying off because nothing is reparable anymore, so if you play tube amps, learning to fix them yourself might be a neccessity.

Building a hand wired tube amp is traveling back in time. It's a lot different than dropping integrated circuits into a prefab circuit board. Laying it out and running the wired neatly can be a real challenge. Makes you really appreciat the old Hi-Watt amps with the military grade wiring.

Some home brew amps sound great, others have you scratching your head wondering why it sounds like shit. It's hit and miss, but you learn how everything in the chain effects the sound. a wrong capacitor or resistor value can spell dissaster. Transformers make a huge difference.

You really don't save any money building your own if you haven't done it before but it's a good learning experience.

[Nitro Express]

Mike Soldano said he lucked out because the library his mom worked at in Seattle threw away all the books on tube cirucuits thinking they were obsolete. Mike dug them all out of the dumpster and says those old engineering manuals allowed him to build some killer amps. He says most people who know anything about tube amp design are dead and the information is really hard to come by.

People laugh when they think of vaccum tubes like they are buggy whips or something but in the heyday of tubes, making good tubes and laying out good circuits was an artform. I always thought it was brilliant how RCA used a tube to split the signal into a push pull circiut. That was a huge breakthrough and allowed more powerful amps to be built. It's interesting stuff. Big transmitters still use tubes.

Ham radio hobbyiests, guitar players, and audiofiles seem to be the only people left on the planet who still appreciate what those little glass bottles can still do. Everyone else has moved on to their disposable solid state junk. LOL!

[BrownSound1]

I've seen vacuum tubes so big that they had 1/4" water cooled copper lines going around them to cool them. This was on a "shake table" that a company here has to vibrate the hell out of BIG parts. They did shake tests for the Saturn IV rocket on that damn thing...in sections of course, but we're talking huge sections. There is no way in hell that a transistor can produce the kind of power it takes to move that thing.

[Panamark]

Gotta love tubes !

Heated elements travelling through air as opposed to silicone doping.

As warm as the sun !

[Hardrock69]

Originally posted by Nitro Express
I built a home brew version of a Fender Bassman. I even bent the metal chassis myself. I used to build Heathkit projects growing up. My dad was a tottal Ham Radio geek, so he taught me a lot about electronics and has a fabulouse work bench and tools to use.

Right now we live in such a throw away society and it's getting to the point where people don't know how to fix anything. If your Line 6 POD breaks, you throw it away and buy something new. If your Marshall Plexi breaks you took it to a repair shop. Repair shops are dying off because nothing is reparable anymore, so if you play tube amps, learning to fix them yourself might be a neccessity.

Building a hand wired tube amp is traveling back in time. It's a lot different than dropping integrated circuits into a prefab circuit board. Laying it out and running the wired neatly can be a real challenge. Makes you really appreciat the old Hi-Watt amps with the military grade wiring.

Some home brew amps sound great, others have you scratching your head wondering why it sounds like shit. It's hit and miss, but you learn how everything in the chain effects the sound. a wrong capacitor or resistor value can spell dissaster. Transformers make a huge difference.

You really don't save any money building your own if you haven't done it before but it's a good learning experience.

Wow Nitro...that is wild. My dad was into Ham Radio as well, and I was one of the youngest persons in the State Of Kansas in 1972 to have a Ham Radio license (at age 12). I used to help my dad build Heathkit transmitters and receivers and stuff, that is where I got my first knowledge of electronics.

Nowadays, I do all my own electrical work on my guitars, though I leave the amp stuff to the experts who do it for a living.

It would be fun to someday build my own amp....

[Nitro Express]

My dad was an electronics geniouse. He went to MIT and was in the top 1% of his class. He was a total egghead but also was a first class tinkerer. He built his own tube hi-fi when he was in high school. I have that along with my grandad's old Philco radio. Both still work.

[Hardrock69]

Right on!

My Dad was offered scholarships to Harvard and Yale, but turned them down because he was happy at the University he was at.

He did not get into electronics heavily until he bought me a 1948 Hallicrafter's tube radio (with short wave bands and AM!). Then he remembered building crystal sets when he was a kid, and that was all she wrote. He got into electronics with a vengeance then....

[BrownSound1]

I knew Morse Code at 8 years old. LMAO Couldn't do it now to save my life. Sounds like we all grew up in similar situations.

[Hardrock69]

Yeah....it has been 30 years since my Ham Radio license expired.

[GAR]

Its all about the engineering math, otherwise it's simple componentwise..

I suggest Aspen Pittman's "The Tube Book" which is in it's 4th revision I believe and is available from mojotone.com. In it you'll find some of the basic engineering data to get started, although I have found the Hoffman amp's AX84 pages to contain usefull things as well as pre-made circuitboards for making Fender and Marshall amp clones.