Hell, I don't even have a build to my name yet, so there's no way I'm laughing.
I decided early on that I was going to make this project as hard for myself as possible. I designed the circuit from scratch, and I'm doing the chassis sizing, drilling, and wiring from scratch (I've got some turret boards lying around). But along the way, I've learned a hell of a lot about amplifier circuits, sources of distortion and interference, and the design trade-offs you have to deal with.
It's made a little harder still because of supplier issues, but I'm getting closer every day to solidifying my choices of parts. This forum has been an endless source of help to me - as have you, Alan.
I'm building just a head, and I'm going to hook it up to the speakers from a 2-12 combo I own until I can cough up the time and money to make a cabinet for it.
I wanted to mount it inside the chassis so the amplifier be more-or-less complete in itself, regardless of the enclosure around it.
As it stands though, internal mounting forces me to go to a 9 3/4" reverb tank instead of a 16 3/4" tank. I'm used to the sound of a longer tank, so the decay time and depth of the shorter tank might sound off to me.
External mounting would mean I could use a thinner chassis, too. I'm at 10x17 right now in my model.
Since this is your first, did you experiment the sound and have the circuit ready?
Don't go from design to build the real thing. After you get the basic operating points and basic power up, the rest is really by experiment. You can take advice and read other schematic, but ultimately it's you tweaking it. Don't do tweaking after you build the real amp. Any changes will hurt the layout.
One hint I want to share with you. Pick speaker and cabinet first, they have a huge effect on the sound. If you can spare the money, have two speaker that has totally different characteristics. I learn this the hard way. You can make the amp sounds good with one speaker and sound awful with another speaker. It is my experience if the amp is design right, it should sound good with all speakers.....be that you like one speaker the best and another one least. BUT they should all sound reasonable with all decent speakers.
It is my experience that you can mug around with the circuit that some how sound decent with one speaker, then you're shock how bad it sound with another one. It is my believe that it's your circuit, not the speaker. I made this mistake. I first buy a Eminence speaker that is close to the original Fender speaker. I worked on it to make it sounds ok. But then I change to the Celestion that came with the KMD, it absolutely sounded funny. I have Fender Pro Reverb, it did not do that, no matter what speaker I use, it sound fine.
I had to redo the circuit, tweak the tone stack, the coupling cap and other filter network and test with different speakers. I even made a box that switch speaker cabinet so I can do quick comparison. I worked until at least it sounded ok with all speaker. After that, my amp do sounded optimal.
This is one lesson I really learned the hard way. I like the WGS as in the picture, but I do have a few other speakers I tested before I finalize the amp.
Now, this is just me.
At the risk of offending other members here. I really suggest you to join this forum:http://music-electronics-forum.com/f10/
People are specialized on guitar amp. There are experts in that forum. Enzo belong to that forum also and he is one of the expert there. I learn a lot from over there. They are expert in guitar tube amp like people here are expert in audiophile here. Guitar amp is so different from audiophile the knowledge does not really cross over.
You might be able to find someone there from Canada and can help you in buying stuffs.
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Alan, that forum looks great! There are people there asking a lot of the same questions that I've been asking.
I was planning on building it and then tweaking for sound after. Since I'm using a turret board for my audio circuit, I don't think the layout will change much - just capacitor/resistor values. I'm not really sure how to build and test high voltage tube circuits safely outside the chassis, since I'm depending on the earthed grounding (also for isolation from the transformer).
Ha ha, you better stop and rethink this whole thing before you even commit any money!!!
There is so much monkeying around on guitar amp. You might think you have the circuit and just changing values, my experience is totally different. I even ended up adding an extra stage!!! I change the interface between the stages, even making an extra tone stack with trim pots inside. Then I add selector between different tone shaping circuit.......
I used my Fender Bassman 100 as a platform to experiment, mug it up, changing and changing until I have something worth building before I put it in the real amp. Then rip everything out of the Bassman and start over again.
There are ways to build a platform on a wood board for experimenting also. I just did not go that route as I worry about crosstalk. Go to that forum and they had picture of how people prototype on the table. You are just listen to me alone here and I am no expert by any stretch. Go there, you are not getting any further here based on the replies you have!!!
My experience is when I build my guitar amp, I use scope, generator when I first power up, check basic function to make sure it works. THEN I put all the scope and generator away and really start working on the amp!!!!
I am building an audio power amp, I already bought a nice chassis and have all the pcb built already. But I built a experimental platform on a wood board and bring it up there. I don't want to drill wrong holes, cut wrong things on the expensive chassis until I know exactly what to do.
I would get a cheap guitar amp with strong chassis, gut it and build your own amp for experiment before you build your custom chassis and head.
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