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Building An Amp


feylya

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Hopefully a couple of people can help me out here. My dad thinks that he could build a better sounding amp than a marshall for less. So I'm trying to find various components and their prices at the moment (specifically speakers, Celestions if possible). Any help would, as always, be greatly appreciated.

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If he does every do it, I'll try and get him to do a tutorial on it. He keeps saying to me that it'd be cheaper to get the cab and speakers and let him build the head/electronic bit. Problem is, he's less than in tune (sic) with guitars and amps and stuff like that.

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good luck and try not to get electrocuted in the process!

Cheers and good advice.

One more question - What features should I get thrown in here? I'll have at least 2 channels, possibly 4, switchable fx loop, and hopefully a tube pre-amp in it. Can any one else think of any good ideas?

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A reverb tank and line in and line out are handy, also why don't you try adding some kind of built in fx like from an old stomp box! That would rock!

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Feylya, does you dad know much about electronics already?

I wanted to try building my own tube amp from scratch and if you want anything of a decent quality it's suprisingly tricky! At first I thought... "It's electronics right!? It must follow a simple set of rules!"... but tube circuits seem to decide otherwise and a lot of the things I read felt more like "Add this because it needs this here, but not there, or here because that would make such and such go to here and then there". It seemed to remind me of a famous clock builder who built clocks by layering fixes to problems he encouted on top of each other, rather than fixing the problems before they became serious enough to need it. Everything seems to effect everything else in some way or another.

Undoubtedly your dad could build one cheaper than Marshall if he really wanted to, but finding all the parts and putting all the effort into it may outweigh paying Marshall to do it for you. Marshall, after all, have suppliers shipping them boxes full of resistors and capacitors for hundred of amps at a time. Sometimes buying individual components can be a lot more effort.

There is quite a drastic step up in component cost for their relative quality as well. A normal audio component, say a filter capacitor, might cost you 5 pounds. But the next stage up is audiophile grade which will cost more like 50 or 100 pounds, for one capacitor. Black Gate capacitors are an example.

As well as these dudes... http://www.audionote.co.uk/

Vastly expensive, but absolutely beautifully made components and systems.

If your dad goes for it out of fun I'd suggest picking up an old Marshall schematic from here: http://www.marshallschematics.com/

I have the 2210 and love it. But you can buy them for about 250 - 450 pounds so making one new for less may be tricky. Building an amp is something I've always wanted to do though so I can see why he wants to!

All the best and good luck!

John

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Basically, he has a degree in Physics, ran an electronics compayn for several years and was head electronic engine in the main television company in Ireland for about 20 years so he knows a bit. He'll be building a solid state poweramp and probably a tueb preamp. I'll have to talk to him at length at some stage (possibly tomorrow) about everything and see how things would work out.

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:D

Looks like you may soon have an amp!

I bet you could make most Marshalls sound twice as good if you ripped off one of their schematics and then fitted higher quality parts to it. Something to perhaps look into if you're able to have one made for you. Higher quality parts usually mean better reproduction of what you're actually inputting and better filtering or efficiency.

I just posted this on another thread but you might not have seen it.

http://www.gerhartamps.com/gilmorejr/build...jr_builders.htm

I have had people tell me their neighbours have asked them to turn down home made amps running on a 9v battery. I don't know if this amp is you thing but it's something I've thought about trying. As I said in the other thread, I really like the clip labeled SD1/808, but there is a guy on there who's modified his for a Marshall Plexi / Van Halen type sound.

Cool clip:

http://www.gerhartamps.com/gilmorejr/build...ric_nelson2.mp3

Van Halen like clip:

http://members.cox.net/musicfiles/modfullvol2.mp3

Kind regards!

John

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  • 5 months later...

if ou need any tubes let me know i got alsorts of 12ax7's and some others that are the same pinout and gain as teh 12ax7 many different names of them i even got a few pencil tubes coming in ie the 6021's like the nano head

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  • 4 weeks later...

As mentioned in another thread, I haven't updated this since October. Basically, I got impatient and pissed off with playing through a 10W Ibanez so I just bought an 80W amp for ?166. Might still see about building one for the craic but not for a long time. Thanks everyone for your help.

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