I've been looking to build a small 5 or 10-watt tube guitar amp with my father over the summer, but I don't know where to start. The kits are too expensive for what I want to do, and I don't really know how to read schematics. I'm aiming towards a Fender Champ style, since from what I've read its a great amp to pair with 12" speakers, or a Vox AC4. Any help would be appreciated, Thanks.
The Champ is an excellent design that has stood the test of time. I'm currently building an amp based on the blackface AA764 Vibro-Champ. Basically a Champ with tremolo.
If you can't read schematics then a kit is the way to go. It's really not difficult to learn to read schematics, and it opens a whole world for you.
John
If you can't read schematics then a kit is the way to go. It's really not difficult to learn to read schematics, and it opens a whole world for you.
John
Rob has done a lot of work for new builders.
How Amps Work
Try this document also. Has a bass and treble tone control.
http://ax84.rru.com/media/ax84_m35.pdf
How Amps Work
Try this document also. Has a bass and treble tone control.
http://ax84.rru.com/media/ax84_m35.pdf
Hard to beat this for $90:
Monoprice 5-Watt, 1x8 Guitar Combo Tube Amplifier with Celestion Speaker - Monoprice.com
Monoprice 5-Watt, 1x8 Guitar Combo Tube Amplifier with Celestion Speaker - Monoprice.com
Thanks, let me know how it turns out. How much are you building yours for? It's about $600-700 to get a kit where I am.
Champ kits start at U$225/250 .
Champlifier Kit – Build Your Own Clone
AA764 Blackface Champ DIY Tube Amp Kit
Even accounting for shipping and Customs not sure how could that reach "about $600-700 to get a kit where I am"
Currently $109.99, but you certainly couldn't build one like it for this almost unbelievable price.
Unfortunately DIY will be a lot more expensive, particularly when you add in the cost of a Celestion speaker and a nicely finished cabinet.
However, the father/son interaction whilst DIYing a guitar amp is probably priceless!
Don't forget you also need tools and supplies, and if at all possible, diagnostic equipment such as an oscilloscope. A decent soldering iron alone can set you back well over $100 ( FX888D-23BY | Hakko Digital Soldering Station - 65W ). A budget 'scope can range from $100 for an ancient used one off Craigslist (if you're very lucky) to $400 for a new digital storage oscilloscope (DSO).
If you want the experience of building something with your dad, regardless of price, then that's one story. Spend $700 for a set of memories that will last you a lifetime? Perhaps that's cheap at the price, if you have the money to spend. But, kit or no kit, I will say that it makes me very nervous to read about first-timers to electronics building valve amps, whether from kits or not. The potentially lethal voltages in a valve amp, are DANGEROUS, and IMO, these should never be considered as a first electronics project. There's just far too much risk involved.
On the other hand, if you just want a Champ, consider Dotneck's post. That Monoprice amp is a Champ, and even after conversion to Canadian dollars and paying for shipping and (maybe) customs, it will come in far cheaper than the kits you're looking at. And you can always do another summer project with Dad, perhaps one that's less dangerous. That could make for equally good memories, without the worries about death by electrocution.
Incidentally, that Monoprice amp also has a bigger cousin, a $200 (USD, on sale) push-pull amp that appears to be a clone of a highly praised Laney model. You can find an excellent review of this amp here: YouTube
-Gnobuddy
Gnobuddy has it right on the button - unless you can assure him that your father has experience of working with high voltage valve amplifiers?
Thanks for the reply, I definitely see what you mean, he has a little experience working with valve amps, but not too much. I might build a guitar instead, as they aren't as dangerous.
I wondered that, too.
If Dad does have such experience, he can probably help source individual parts for the amp (rather than buy an expensive $700 kit), which can reduce the price considerably if you shop carefully. And presumably he already has the tools and other equipment needed for the project.
Also, if Dad knows his way around valve guitar amps, you have options like this pre-wired turret board at a very reasonable cost: Turret Board soldered components fits Fender 5E1 5F1 Champ DIY guitar amp /Kits | eBay
Basically you provide the rest of the hardware - transformers, fuse, pots, switches, knobs, case, speaker, grille.
When I lived in Los Angeles, it wasn't too hard to find a nasty-sounding cheap used solid-state guitar amp to cannibalize for many of these otherwise expensive parts (cab, speaker, grille, power cord, maybe switches and pots, etc.) Since I moved to BC I haven't seen any of those bargains, though, and Craigslist sellers here usually want so much for their old SS amps that they're not worth buying.
For what it is, the Monoprice amp is pretty much unbeatable, though. As a father-son project, you could even consider transplanting the innards of one of those Monoprice Champs into a bigger cab (perhaps DIY) with a bigger speaker.
-Gnobuddy
That could be a lot of fun.
I built a solid-body guitar in the mid 1980s. I couldn't even dream of owning a computer back then, and there was no public Internet. A few US universities were networked to each other for research purposes, but the general public and those outside the USA had never heard of computer networks, never mind the Internet.
So it was hard to find guitar-building information and I made several errors (for instance, guessing how many turns of wire my DIY guitar pickups would need.)
It was a fun project, nevertheless, and ended with a reasonably playable guitar that I used for many years, as I was a proverbial starving student, and didn't have the money to buy a "real" electric guitar.
Back to your plans for the summer, do you know about Solo guitar kits? The company is based in Canada (Toronto), and they have a lot of interesting guitar kits to ponder, as well as bass guitar, violin (!), ukulele, mandolin, etc: DIY Electric Guitar Kits, Build Your Own Guitar Kit | Solo Music Gear
Even if you decide to build your own guitar body, Solo might be a good resource for some of the bits and pieces you'll need, like tuners and pickups, complete guitar necks, etc.
(It seems the necks are only 1 5/8" wide at the nut, which is unplayably narrow for those with big fingers like me, but not a problem for those with smaller hands or more slender fingers.)
-Gnobuddy
That looks comfortable to play!Not necessarily!
Maybe wrap it in barbed wire while they're at it?
-Gnobuddy
Oh come on. If everyone is too squeamish on building a Champ go to Shock Brother's DIY Amps | Telecaster Guitar Forum and ask there. All kinds of greenhorns have built their Champ and if needing help troubleshooting they managed to get it going without a scope. And a $20 soldering iron will do the job.
Haven't you been involved with a few low-voltage valve amp projects, because you wanted them to be safe for newcomers to the hobby?
Yes, you're right, people who didn't have the knowledge to keep themselves safe have built valve amps, and survived.
I've also used the cheapest of soldering irons, when I had nothing better. Yes, you can learn to solder with them, particularly when no heat-sensitive semiconductors are involved. It is hard to make consistent good quality joints, though, and with this sort of iron, there is little margin between a dry solder joint and a cold solder joint.
When I was a child, I also drilled a hole into the top of my foot, because I had no vice, so I held the part I was drilling between my toes; and then I didn't tell my parents, to avoid getting into trouble. I filled the hole in my foot with penicillin ointment and hobbled around until it healed.
I survived with no lasting ill effects, but that doesn't mean what I did was smart, and I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone else. If I had been unlucky enough to get a tetanus infection from that deep puncture wound, things might have gone very differently.
In my teens, I also balanced on the parapet of my two-storey parent's house and walked all the way around it. The house was elevated several feet above ground, the parapet was waist high, and each storey was a bit over 10 feet high, with a thick reinforced concrete roof slab. So I was some 25 - 30 feet above hard clay soil during that walk.
No harm done, I never even wobbled. But looking back, it was a very stupid thing to do, the sort of idiotic thing teenage boys with more testosterone than common-sense do. If I had slipped off and fallen to the ground, things would have been very ugly for me. (Of course I did this when nobody else was at home, so I wouldn't get in trouble...brilliant decision!
)Many of us have made bad decisions, and got away with them. But that doesn't mean they were good decisions...or that we will get away with them every time.
Maybe it has something to do with getting older. I know there will be fewer years ahead of me than there are behind me. The time I have left doesn't seem worth risking on building a guitar amp.
-Gnobuddy
^+1 what he said
Amp: A kit is a good idea. I got into electronics in the mid 1960s helping my dad build all valve Heathkit amplifiers. At the time neither of us knew a thing about that kind of stuff but we learned to solder and the amp and tuner worked fine - with no test equipment.
OK, now I have a lifetime of electronics design behind me, I use a pro iron and I have a USB oscilloscope - but none of that is necessary if you follow a good kit carefully. And at the end - your own valve amp! Totally cool.
Pete
A truly cheap alternative is to build something like the Ruby (there are a few other designs of similar nature out there). Now it's not a tube amp, but it does sound quite nice in my opinion. I recently built one mostly from available materials and it was a lot of fun
2-sided board for Ruby Amp
It can be done easily on veroboard, and robrobinette even has a turret board layout for it.
How the Ruby Works
As a first time guitar amp building exercise it is far simpler and safer than a tube amp. It is less loud than a champ but probably not by much.
2-sided board for Ruby Amp
It can be done easily on veroboard, and robrobinette even has a turret board layout for it.
How the Ruby Works
As a first time guitar amp building exercise it is far simpler and safer than a tube amp. It is less loud than a champ but probably not by much.
I haven't built one myself, but if I were to try it, this kit would be the one I'd try:
335-Style Electric Guitar Kit | stewmac.com
Doesn't say what the neck width is. I'm sure it ain't like my $20,000 '61 dotneck, but I bet it's pretty good!
The 335 is probably my favourite guitar design. Ted McCarty's master-stroke!
Stewmac makes lots of good stuff, but much of it is expensive in the USA, and prohibitive in Canada.
In the case of this particular 335-style guitar kit, I'd guess it's not a Stewmac product as such, but rather, a kit manufactured in China. Perhaps with an added layer of quality control from Stewmac.
Within Canada, Solo does have "335-style" kits: Solo ESK-35L DIY Electric Guitar Kit With Flame Maple Top | Solo Music Gear
IMO at that price the Solo kit is dubious value. You can buy an already-built "335-style" guitar for about the same price, or even for much, much less, in some cases: YouTube )
The guy who put up that video invariably uses very dark guitar tone for some reason. So I don't know if the muted and lifeless tone we hear in that video is caused by the way he sets his amp, or whether that Firefly guitar suffers from overwound and dull-sounding pickups.
-Gnobuddy
Building a tube amp kit or building it from scratch by a newbie, especially by someone who never felt or seen what electricity can do is like playing russian roulette. I do play with electricity on daily basis and I know very well how 120 feels like. Even 277V on commercial project when you get hit because of sloppy connection the guy before you did, it's a lot of fun when you are 6ft up in the air on the ladder. I built a lot of solid state hi-fi gear in the past decade but not until recently I built a Marshall JCM 800 clone. Couple of weeks ago, I did some output tube bias adjustment and had 3 multimeters hooked up to my amp. When swapping one of the probe...you guessed it . I accidentally touched the case and the 1K screen grid resistor, roughly 420VDC, and it was very nasty feeling. Got me only to one hand. So when you see those warning labels "lethal voltages" "high voltage can kill you", take them very seriously!
I built a lot of solid state hi-fi gear in the past decade but not until recently I built a Marshall JCM 800 clone. Couple of weeks ago, I did some output tube bias adjustment and had 3 multimeters hooked up to my amp. When swapping one of the probe...you guessed it . I accidentally touched the case and the 1K screen grid resistor, roughly 420VDC, and it was very nasty feeling. Got me only to one hand. So when you see those warning labels "lethal voltages" "high voltage can kill you", take them very seriously!