Hey all. I got it into my head to build an amp a little while back and found sanctuary here for all my information wants and needs. I've stuck mostly to the tube101 area, but I think I should expand my horizons and show you what i've been up to with all your kind and generous help.
Here's the story.
The amp is based off a Deluxe ab763 circuit. I was able to salvage most of the parts needed from an old Bell & Howell powered speaker. Came with a late 60's jenson alnico 12" and a really nifty cabinet all for $80.... CANADIAN! So, after that I found a frikken saint of a man here in edmonton who runs a small amp repair shop called C4 audio works. If you guys ever need a guy, he's where it's at. I got most of my remaining parts from him and the whee stuff from a wonderful electronics store just down the road from my house.
I didn't want it to look like a fender so i strayed REALLY far from their design and made the entire chassis and enclosure out of acrylic. It looks really neat.
I wanted to make everything myself if it was possible, so I got some blank one sided coper covered pcb board, stripped the copper off it and cut it to size. I then found out that they use copper rivets to fasten skate blades into their holder thingy's and it just so happened that I work in a giant bike shop with a skate sharpening department. So I went down and asked them for some rivets and low and behold, I had turrets. All I had to do then was drill the centers out and I was ready to rock.
I made a guitar about a year ago and had a bunch of the wood left over so I used some fretboard wood (pau farro) and made a nice little control panel out of that.
Another cool thing I found in my research was on the Angela amp site. They have a design for a super single ended 6l6 amp features an octal and a 9 pin socket connected together to a really wide variety of swapping for preamp tubes, specifically between the 12ax7 and a 6sl7. So, I ran with that and did the same. I haven't put it together yet, but I am going to make a relay box to allow remote switching between the tubes so i don't have to actually pull the thing and replace it when ever I want to get that different sound.
Alright, enough blathering. Here are some pictures.
My only issue now is figuring out how to ground it with this acrylic case. I've posted a few places asking for help but am still on the hunt. If anyone has ideas I would appreciate it. Keep in mind, this is my first amp ever and I have very little knowledge (comparatively) of how to do it. So in short, use little words and maybe draw a picture. I do well with pictures.
Thanks all. Hope you like the amp.