Amp kit advice/recommendation

[stebnera]

Hi all-

I'm new to TGP, and have decided to take a whirl at making my own amplifier. I'd like to buy a kit with the electronics, chassis & schematic, but I already have speakers and am going to design & build/machine my own cabinet/face/etc. I was thinking of doing a traditional Fender or Vox copy for the first go around, something fairly clean & warm sounding as my current amp has plenty of bite. Anything in the 15-50W range, don't need any more power than 35, really, as it's just going to be for studio use. A reverb circuit would be fantastic, but aside from that, basic is probably good... preamp, power, reverb. When I google amp kits, there are so many different selections, I was wondering what recommendations more experienced people have. Especially where to buy.

My level of competence is pretty high... I have a master's degree in engineering, and make my own cables and thermocouples for my lab, but I've never actually built a complete piece of machinery on my own, I typically only do the mechanical design & build and some basic electronics work. I could definitely decipher a complete schematic on my own, but something with a few additional instructions for the first go-around would be nice as it would ease the information I learned in basic EE some 10 years ago back out a little softer & quicker than digging through my old text book. Metering, math, and solder technique etc is not not an issue though.

Thanks,
Aaron

[Old Tele man]

...Ted Weber sells kits with "delete" permissions...contact him. and, yes, there are also many other "kit" sellers: Allen, etc.

[stebnera]

thanks!

[Jason Carter]

http://store.bnamp.com/diy.html

[Caretaker]

I know several people that have assembled Mojotone kits with great success.

[stebnera]

I had a friend that put one of the mojotone kits together and loved it. Why are they so much more than the comparable Weber kits though? Even when I take out the speakers and cabinets they are still quite a bit more. Are they using higher quality components? Unfortunately, the friend is no longer here, so I can't pick his brain. Thanks again for the suggestions.

[tommytomcat]

The Weber kits are less because they source many of the parts from china.. tranny's especially. I built a 5E7 tweed bandmaster using 90% weber parts and it sounds fantastic. I did sub a Eminience Legend 105 speaker for one of the Signature Series (alnico) 10S's. If you want reverb, I'd suggest their 6A14HP kit with the Sig 12B ceramic speaker. It's basically a BF Princeton with with a bigger PT & OT 30-35 watts (the same OT is used in a BF pro & vibroluxe). Single channel, 4 preamp tubes, bias modulating trem and of course reverb. At $550 it's a cool deal. They've upgraded the quality of the input jacks, pots are fine, I've never had any problems with their electrolytics and they're smaller and easier to work with than the atoms.. The downside is the BF style kits are fairly difficult to put together.. lead dress is critical. Look at a lot of pictures of quality builds and read as much as you can. Check out the Hoffman grounding scheme (www.hoffmanamps.com (http://www.hoffmanamps.com)), ie keep the power supply and preamp grounds away from each other. If you can dig a tweed amp setup and don't mind spending some extra bucks. I'd go with an external reverb unit (5g15 from Weber), do it first, it's easy and good practice. Then go with a 5e3 (deluxe), 5f4 (super 2x10), 5e7 (bandmaster 3x10), 5e5a (1x15 pro) or 5f6a (4x10 bassman) tweed style combo. The reverb unit does wonderful things to the front end of those tweed amps and the 3 knob control really lets you dial in exactly what you want reverb wise. Good luck and have fun... it gets very addictive once you get started.

[GearHeadFred]

+1 on Weber.. I built a 6A40 (Black Face Super Reverb) and have been using it as a gigging amp with no problems as all for almost a year now. Only a few items needed to be upgraded - mostly mechanical things - I found all of the core components to be quite adequate. I had it side-by-side with my buddy's vintage 66 Super Reverb, and the tones were very very similar.

[Dollar]

I just finished an Allen Encore head (my second amp build- did a 5F6A bassman 2 years ago) and this Encore is probably the best amp I've ever had. The only one that is close is a 66 Pro Reverb I had several years ago. David Allen did a great job with his Encore design (similar to a BF Vibrolux Reverb) and his kit and supporting documents are excellent.

http://www.allenamps.com/index.php

He's running a special through Dec. with $100.00 off every kit he has.

[GearHeadFred]

I went with Weber but I'll vouch for Allen too! In my research, I spoke to many many devoted Allen builders and players -- never a single bad word from any of them. The "Old Flame" is basically a BFSR without the normal channel and vibrato (who uses those anyway!). Seems like a very good option too.

[stebnera]

Thanks so much for all the response. It looks like I'll probably start out with one of the Weber kits, maybe even the reverb unit for starters, just to get my feet wet. I have read through the schematics of most of their kits, and I remember much more than I thought I would! Anyway, I'm looking at a move in the next month due to a new job, so I'll probably just try to read a few books and educate myself as much as possible in the mean time.

I do have 4 vintage celestion 12", 4 modern-era celestion 12", and two weber 12" speakers, as well as my existing 4x10 Markley cab, so I think I'm going to utilize those before I purchase additional speakers, but his kits look fantastic and are definitely the right price. I've also looked briefly at the Allen kits, and will look into them more extensively.

Radiotron Designer's Handbook and O'Connor's "The Ultimate Tone" looked like good places to start for reading material, but I would be open to other suggestions as well.

Aaron

[Seakayak]

"The Guitar Amp Handbook" by David Hunter is an interesting read, discussing some early tube circuits, characteristics of various tubes and other components, etc, but it may be too basic for you.

[BBQLS1]

I'm not a fan of the Weber kits, at least not the Marshall style one I did. Not a fan of some of the parts. I love his speakers though!

I'd look at doing a tweed or 18 watt lite for my first amp. You will really learn some stuff about building the first go around and having extra circuits will make the troubleshooting a little harder. But don't let me tell you what you should do, just my thoughts here.

www.brownnote.com - 18W, Dumble Inspired
www.allenamps.com - Various Fender inspired (blackface, brownface)
www.missionamps.com - Tweed Deluxe
www.gdsamps.com - 18W
www.trinityamps.com - 18W, matchless, tweeds
www.dockeryamps.com - 18W, Tweeds, AX84
www.ceriatone.com - What doesn't Nik sell?

[quixola]

I recently purchased a Mojo champ kit, and while I did realize I'd be doing all the assembly work (that's the idea), I was surprised they didn't include so much as a glimpse of direction or process. Apparently other companies offer this Mojo kit, WITH instructions. Does anybody out there happen to have these instructions available?

[TweeDLX]

I had great success with the Mission 5E3 kit. Reasonable price, decent quality, and Bruce (and other members of the 5E3 forum on Ampage) is very helpful at solving any "crisis" that occurs.

Mike

[Kitarist]

Ceriatone And Metro are the best at least for me