Amp Construction

[erikbuzz]

Has any one here ever built an amp. I am planning on building one...any advice

[lovekraft]

If you're talking tube amps, my advice would be trot on over to AX84 and take a look at the projects there, or go check the stuff at 18Watt.Com. I'd start with a simple project - Doberman Music Products offers kits for the P1 and HO from AX84, and GDS Amps has 18 watter kits. Keep in mind that this is an expensive hobby - parts aren't cheap, and it's relatively easy to smoke expensive components unless you're very careful, not to mention the obvious dangers of playing with high voltages ( burns, bad hair days, death). You probably can't make a high-gain amp for what you can buy one for, and you should expect to spend probably twice as much time debugging your amp as you did building it. Solid state is easier, just match up your favorite power amp chip with a preamp, but it's solid state, so you'll have to be clever to make the distortion sound decent. HTH, and remember, anything that plugs into the wall socket can kill you if you don't treat it with respect.

[jbkim]

Yeah, probably more expensive to build than buy... here are a couple of old threads for you to ponder:

http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic=4617

http://projectguitar.ibforums.com/index.php?showtopic=2771

Member feylya mentions in that last thread that

Mr Father says he could build a cheaper & better one

but that was last October... but still no update on that .

[feylya]

Ha, I stumbled in here and read that quote. Basically, I ended up buying an 80 watt 2 channel amp for ?166 so no more was said about building.