• WARNING: Tube/Valve amplifiers use potentially LETHAL HIGH VOLTAGES.
    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
    performed by someone who is thoroughly familiar with
    the safety precautions around high voltages.

DIY tube amp general inquiry

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Hey guys, I'm new to the forums and hoping you can give me some helpful advice or at least point me in the right direction. Now I'm surely getting in over my head, as I have little experience in DIY electronics, but I have gotten it in my mind I want to build a tube amplifier. I'm thinking of attempting to emulate a mark series (probably IIc+) pre amp circuit.
1. Any resources you guys can direct me to would be fantastic.
2. Any tips or specific information from someone who has experience with these types of projects would be exceedingly fantastic.
3. There is a Hammond M3 tube power amplifier from a Hammond organ for sale in my area and I am wondering if this might be suitable for my application? I am not trying to perfectly reproduce a mesa markIIc+ sound keep in mind. I just want to create something that sounds unique and works.
Thanks in advance to any responding tinkerers. I fully acknowledge my noobness and hopefully will glean lots of useful information.
Sterling
 
I like your plan, I own 2 hammond AO-43 tube amplifiers both pulled from organs. they are an easy place to start learning tube theory. If you are after a more diy amplifier I am building a DIY tube preamp right now that has good reviews and can be built with a lot of the extra parts from the hammond organ. (tube sockets, breadboards)

DIY ECC802S (12AU7 / ECC82) Vacuum Tube SRPP Preamplifier

Thats the url of the tube preamp I am building. Are you building for guitar or for HI-FI? If you are after a guitar amp you may want to keep the reverb from the organ. I gotta admit the hammond build quality is excellent in my opinion for a tube amp that costs less than $50 or (if you are lucky) is free! Good luck! and be careful
 
Re: guitar preamp

My experience with goofing around with guitar amps was that the tone control circuit and the sound of the speaker cab make the biggest differences in clean tone.

You might already know of this, but Duncan Amps' Tone Stack Calculator is a lot of fun. You can model several of the most popular guitar amp tone control circuits. You can change component values and see what those changes do to the frequency response. That could give you ideas on building a preamp.

Personally, I always liked the good old Fender Blackface circuit, but that might be because I played clean most of the time, not overdriven (much).

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Thanks Rongon:
I don't plan on building my own cabinet yet and I have a closed back Vader 2x12 and an open back 4x10 fender combo I can use as a cab.

I had not played around with that Tone Stack Calculator before. Thank you, very cool!

After looking at schematics more I have realized I am not very picky as to what type of preamp I build right now. I just want to find something not overly complicated as an introductory project. I do use overdriven sounds most of the time but I also appreciate a good clean tone. I use a box in front of my fender combo for distortion right now anyway, so if a blackface circuit is easy to reproduce maybe that would be a good start for me.
 
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