How did you get started building/fixing/modifying guitar amplifiers?

[Wilder Amplification]

I get this all the time when I go to other forums. It never fails...some joe schmoe who just barely learned what a soldering iron is a couple of days ago now wants to "upgrade" the transformers in his amp. He buys the transformers, which come with support documentation that shows the pin out of the transformer windings. Of course he doesn't understand this so he comes onto a forum and posts a question like -

I purchased "brand X" transformers for my amp but I can't figure out where the wires go. Can someone please help me?

In which you respond with -

Sure thing. Here are the links to the transformer support docs as well as the amp schematic -

<post link list here>

In which the OP comes on and responds with the all too typical -

Oh...I don't know how to read schematics. Can you just read them for me and tell me how to do it?

And of course you don't want to help him other than to tell him that he needs to take his amp to a qualified tech to have the work done because he doesn't yet have the minimum basic knowledge of electricity and electronics to be working on high voltage amplifiers. Of course the OP gets offended and comes back on with his defensive response -

Come on dude! I know you weren't born doing this kind of work. You gotta start somewhere. How did you get started?

Well...truth be known I certainly didn't get started by deciding to take on something like a transformer upgrade to amps that I know nothing about, let alone even blindly poking around in high voltage amplifiers with zero electronics knowledge.

So...let's post up how we all got started. As for me, I started general electronics at the young age of 12. At that age, I figured out how to wire up a 3V lamp to 2 x AA batteries and got the thing to work and just thought that was the coolest thing in the world. So my dad bought me the Radio Shack 130 in 1 Electronic Project Lab and that was the best $30 he ever spent on me! I would not put the thing down!

Of course, I hadn't yet started playing guitar by this point. I wouldn't start that until I was 13 so at this point I knew I loved electronics, but didn't yet have a direction to go with it. So I practiced learning how to solder, building the little DIY blinky/flashy kits you find at your local electronics surplus stores and what not as well as power supplies. Reading anything I could get my hands on that had any sort of electronics literature to read and learning how to read schematics.

By the time I was 15 I had gotten my first electric guitar and started wiring up pickups any which way I could think of (of course that gets boring really fast). It was then that I decided I wanted to learn valves. Luckily, at my high school, the library still had some obsolete electronics books from back in the valve era. I checked those out and didn't return them until I had read them cover to cover (had to go back for many extensions though).

Also in high school, I had a friend who's dad knew my dad for many years and specialized in guitar amps. I'd go to his house every weekend and soon was hanging out in his dad's shop most of the time. He loaned me the book "Inside Tube Amps" by Dan Torres. He did explain that some of it was dumbed down but that there was some great info in that book. When I had turned 17, I had read that book cover to cover, he sold me my first valve amp, which was a boutique amp made by some company called "Nomad". I had also been just recently exposed to the magical tone of a '71 Marshall Super Lead, so my goal was to build that boutique amp into one.

It worked!!! I too had that magical Super Lead tone in a 50 watt package!

From there I just kinda took off with it...reading websites such as R.G. Keen's Geofex site as well as Randall Aiken's site. I rebuilt a '65 Fender Pro Reverb back to stock and gigged with that amp for quite a few years until I started getting into the 70s/80s era hard rock/heavy metal stuff. I then built my own Super Lead clones and eventually got into the "hot rod 2203" schemes from some of the great modders of the 80s, most notably Todd Langner stuff.

So rather than do it backwards by just "jumping into it" with someone holding my hand through it all, I instead learned all the basics I could a few years prior to poking around high voltage stuff. Electricity is something to be respected and the more knowledge you can arm yourself with prior to tackling complex jobs on amps the better for your own safety.

Everyone feel free to post up your "How I got started" stories!

[GregS]

I was trying to build things in the basement from about age 6 on. Of course many of these things didn't work the way they were supposed to or I never finished them. I was always taking things apart to figure out how they worked. I was very into mechanical and electronic things. I learned to solder as well. I remember getting a serious shock off of some junk lamp I found in the basement that I was trying to repair.

I also got the Radio Shack project kit although I think mine was the 150 in 1. That was also around the time I started my playing guitar - my father's Harmony acoustic.

In high school I took electricity and electonics classes. The electricity class was house wiring. I found the electronics a lot more interesting. I learned how to read schematics and how to put circuits together from the numerous projects I built. I also learned first hand how large electrolytic capacitors store charge even after something as been turned off and unplugged with this strobe light project I built which worked on extremely high voltages. Man was that a shock! The teacher and other students found this hilarious - this was a different time from today!

I had plans for this to be my career. I had started building a guitar amp as a project with my teacher guiding me. Unfortunately all this came to an end when my father got another job in another city. The amp never got finished and the electronics career dream ended. The new school was underfunded and didn't offer any courses of this nature.

Much later on I bought the book "Amps - The Other Half of Rock and Roll". I found it incredibly interesting and inspiring which led to buying the book "Electronic Projects for Musicians" by Craig Anderton. I built some of the projects in it. I didn't feel up to tackling an amp at this time though. The internet was very new and I didn't know where to find any information either.

I lost interest and got into other things like radio control boat modelling for a while. A few years ago I bought a Fender VibroChamp XD for practice at home which I found really cool. It's appearance inspired me to re-read "Amps - The Other Half of Rock and Roll" more than 10 years after I read it the first time. Again I found it really inspiring and decided I wanted to try building amps. I read Dave Hunter's book on tube amps, the information on Randall Aiken's site, and also bought TUT3

For my first amp project I decided on the Ampeg Portaflex project in TUT3. That worked out well and then I built a copy of the Marshall 2061x for my brother which was also a success. Also I restored a 66 Fender Bandmaster for my brother which he bought off ebay. This has become his main amp and I perform all the maintenance on it.

I then decided I wanted to design my own guitar amp and bought most of the rest of the TUT series of books as well as Merlin's book on tube pre-amps. I designed a 15W amp with a 6V6 power section in cathode bias and a rather involved pre-amp section. I am very happy with the results of the prototype I built of this design which I'm now using in my band. I'm building a couple of finished copies of this at the moment. I have an all tube bass amp design planned after these builds.

I hope I haven't put anyone to sleep with my long rambling post. I'm getting pretty tired myself!

Greg

[riz]

Ha, I had that exact thing with the transformer guy happen to me two weeks ago--in person! And I'm not even a "real" amp repair shop... I suppose I got started because amps break down, and I used to tour a lot, but we didn't make much money. Now I'm just obsessed with learning enough to do my own design and mod work, which is kind of happening. I'm the 42-year-old kid in the basement.

[Steve Conner]

Well, I was an EE student in the 90s, and I wanted a Dual Rectifier because all my favourite bands played them, but I couldn't afford one. So, I got a 50 watt tube PA amp of some sort, free from a local electronics repair shop who knew nothing about tubes and couldn't be bothered fixing it, and started hacking.

This was before you could just download a schematic of any amp you fancied cloning, so it ended up nothing like a Dual Rectifier, but I was more than happy with the sound. I also joined the MEF around this point and have been hanging around sporadically ever since. (My home-made high gain monster was something like #15 in the original Readers' Amps gallery. )

My career has taken me far away from guitar amps and I doubt I could ever make a living out of them, but they are beautiful things. The circuits are so minimal, and every part interacts with almost every other: there's none of this plonking down black boxes full of op-amps. I think it is the art of analog electronics in its purest sense. I love the contrast to the huge piles of digital gubbins and firmware I deal with at work.

Things I never got round to doing: Ken Gilbert's BAGA came out around the time I first got into the hobby, and I was so impressed I wanted my own 300 watt tube amp. However, I never got into a band loud enough to be able to use one, even as a bass amp, let alone for guitar. I scrounged up several candidate sets of transformers over the years, and they have to be stored on the floor, because the weight would destroy any shelf.

[Gibsonman63]

I studied electronics some 25 years ago. Got my two year degree and it opened doors for me, but I never used that knowledge for work to a great extent. I spent most of my career designing and programming control panels. The hardware design is not overly complicated, mainly integration of existing widgets following common sense rules of grounding and isolation. Never anything on a component level.

At the same time, I was picking up lots of pawn shop prizes. In the days before eBay and the internet, the pawn shops were more than happy to sell for 100% markup regardless of the real value of the item. I kept finding Blackface Bandmaster and Tremolux heads for $75 - $100. There was a local guy here that would fix them for me for little of nothing, so life was good. Over time, I traded until I got most of the Blackface Fenders that I really wanted.

Fast forward 15 years and my repair guy was getting slower, more expensive and the quality of work was declining, so my amp collection sat and over the next few years most of them developed problems and were no longer playable.

I got to the point in my career and personal life where I had time to pursue it, so I started buying books and videos and relearning some of the basic electronics that I had forgotten. I bought all of Gerald Weber’s books and one of his videos on a whim (he advertises a lot). I started replacing electrolytic caps and my amps started coming back to life. I kept going and bought one of Lee Jackson’s videos. Then I found M-E-F and found guys like Merlin Blencowe, Randall Aiken and Kevin O’ Connor. I bought and read both of Merlin Blencowe’s books and Kevin O’ Connor’s first book and read through Randall Aiken’s entire website. I bought Dave Funk’s book and Aspen Pitman’s book to round things out. BTW, Dave Funk has some really good information about the Fender model numbers.

Over the course of about three years, I went through all of my amplifiers and bought, restored and sold a couple. Then I found the guys at TAG (The Amp Garage) and built a Trainwreck Express clone.

… and here I am.

Now I am reading Dan Erlewine’s book on refretting and setup and I have bought a few basic lutherie tools. Same problem as the amplifiers. It’s hard to find reliable people to do this kind of work and when you do, it is very expensive and takes forever. I have enough guitars to make it worth my while learning how to do it myself.

[cminor9]

Been playing guitar for about 25 years, and about 15 years ago I got my first tube amp.

Have always had a knack for fixing things and understanding how things worked. My dad used to fix all the neighbors lawn mowers for a little extra cash, used to help friends fix their cars etc, and would let me watch and even help. so I kinda grew up knowing how to turn a wrench. By the time I was about 7 or 8 I could tear down and rebuild a Briggs and stratton engine. My dad always had tools but lacked the good sense to put them up, so I would take everything in the house apart with them. Then I got into electrical work. always wanted to get into electronics but lacked the discipline to sit down and learn it. Even bought the Craig anderton book and just never did any more with it. I was always the guy who people could call to hook up their car stereos, build sub boxes, etc, though, and always liked hacking electronics. I too had one of those 130 in one electronics boards. I'd try running speakers from my boom box through transformers and resistors and so on, just to see what would happen.

Then one day I decided I was tired of playing my first tube amp (a hot rod deville). My musicianship had greatly improved but my gear was still sorta crappy. Needed a new amp, and found out there was a bewildering array of choices. So I did some research on what to get. That's when I discovered old fenders. I had always wondered how tube amps worked. So one day I decided I'd learn, so I just started googling how they work. This was about 5 years ago. After about 8 months of studying I decided it was time to build something. So I built a 5e3. Well, obviously I was hooked at that point, no turning back now! Since the 5e3 I have rebuilt it twice, built others, and then other amps. I play about 6-12 gigs a year and all I gig with are amps I have built. Every time I get a compliment on my tone, I am proud to say I built the amp. I guess I have been fortunate and maybe a bit meticulous, because all of my builds except for one ill fated 6g3 has pretty much worked correctly from the first power up.

If you are mechanically inclined, and are willing to spend time gaining real understanding, then you can do this too. I think people who come here looking for quick answers will soon learn that there is no substitute for understanding and hard work.

[Chuck H]

Well... Since you asked...

I've never been of any means and it seems my tastes are often beyond my budget. Ever since childhood I've been learnng about the "things" that I surround myself with so that I could control my own environment because I couldn't afford to involve others at a price, however reasonable it usually is. So...

Dan Torres was my amp guy when I was about 20. He did some mods for me and I eventually had him build a custom amp for me. I was (and am) very particular (PITA) and Dan can be a bit cranky. Dan was just getting into his own amp line and had less time to deal with my obsessiveness. So I did what I always do when I can't get what I want through normal channels or due to lack of funding... I said to myself "Well, I guess I'm gonna have to learn to do it myself". This would have been about twenty one years ago I guess.

I shocked the shit out of myself once, blew up a few things and took several burns from soldering irons. I found Ampage (MEF) early on and have been here through both format changes, though I didn't always re register right away. I own a few electronic books. Though the real hairy stuff still goes over my head I do pretty well due to sheer level of exposure.

[overtone]

When I was nine years old my grandfather clipped some wires to me and hit me with a load of electricity. After laughing like a madman, he taught me what voltage, current and resistance was. He explained Ohm's law and I never forgot that lesson. He used to teach the army radio operators how to repair their valve radios in the field. We proceeded to wind coils, build solenoids, telephones and things like that. I built my first guitar at 15 and my first amp at 16. Sadly I was unimpressed by the performance of my 100W power amp... I did not know it needed a pre-amp too!

The next step was some thirty years later when I could not find a technician around here to service my 1970's Burman amps and a similar thought went through my head as in Chuck's post above:

... I said to myself "Well, I guess I'm gonna have to learn to do it myself"...

So it was the need to be able to fix my own amp and the resource of MEF, which helped me understand the electrickery inside the box, that got me started.
I am still only just started, five builds, five repairs and no smoke signals so far. MEF has helped me enormously and I appreciate how the old hands here really get to the point. A big hearty thank you to all for helping to keep a few old amps doing what they are supposed to do.
Best, tony

[Ronsonic]

I learned something of electronics very young. My dad was a contract engineer working mostly in integrating electronics and mechanical design, everything from headphones to piezo-electric hydrophones for torpedoes. He did some electronics as a hobby, the usual "dad stuff" of the era, heathkit hifi and the like. So I'm from the culture of "real men build and fix stuff." It was only natural that I'd fix, mod, maintain my own gear. Never was interested in doing it professionally, just a hobby.

Then one day I became utterly burned out on what I was doing for a living (just ask me about Title 42 of the internal revenue code covering Low Income Tax Credits). And having the property I was managing sold to someone I really couldn't work for (named slumlord of the year by the Village Voice two years running) I landed with enough bank account to go pro. Haven't made money since.

[JHow]

When I was young my mom brought home a 1940's Philco AC radio set that she got at a garage sale. She said "Here. It doesn't work. Maybe you can fix it." Not knowing anything at all, I plugged it in and it hummed like crazy. I tried the volume knob, the hum got louder and softer. I tried the tuning knob and, in the midst of the hum, I tuned a station.

I didn't know anything, so I went to the library at my dad's school and read a book on repairing antique radios. In the book, I read the chapter on power supplies and became convinced (?) that perhaps the radio needed replaced filter caps. In those days there was no internet, but somehow, maybe in the back of Popular Electronics or somesuch I found the address to Antique Electronic Supply. I ordered one of their multi-section replacement caps, got a soldering iron at radio shack and hooked it up like the orginal one - and it worked! It was the first time I fixed anything electrical and what I liked about the experience was that electrical things appeared to yield to logic.

I ended up experimenting with that radio (actually I still have it) by researching all the tube diagrams at the library and drawing out my own full schematic. The book I read had warned me of the dangers of the transformerless design, but even so I managed to do a little "arc-welding" with a meter probe until eventually I got a large surplus isolation transformer, added a cord and outlet to use on the bench. Over time, people, knowing I had an interest, would give me their old radios. Often the AC sets, later also transistor radios.

[Wombaticus]

I've been playing guitar for 25 years, but one day just got a wild hair to build my own amp... I think I somehow just semi-randomly stumbled across AX84.com, and the idea of building my own just immediately resonated really deeply. I guess I hadn't even really realized before finding that site one day that it was even practical to build your own tube amp... So sure enough, a few days later I ordered one of Doberman's P1-eX kits, not knowing at all what dangerous crack I was about to inhale. After that, I built, I think, six amps my first year in the hobby and I haven't looked back since.

When I started, Ohm's law was a dim remembrance, and I bugged the sh*t out of people on AX84 asking incredibly naive questions -- but remarkably everyone was kind enough to stop and help the newb. The AX84 theory guide was also a remarkably helpful starting place for tube theory. As for learning basic electronics, absolutely the best thing was my discovery of LTSpice. I quickly figured out that for many basic things (filters for example) simulating the circuits that you would otherwise just read about made the lightbulbs come on a *lot* faster. I think it's very overlooked as a basic learning tool.

[jmaf]

In 1994 I took my Marshall JCM head to a friend's electronics repair shop. I saw him take it apart and I would ask about everything. The hot bottles conquered my heart and though I later pursued a BsC in Physics, it was always Electrical Engineering that I wanted. I never went into EE because of time, bills, etc and I could no longer spend a full day at the university. So I built tons of little electronic projects for fun, while paying bills through computer programming, which is what everyone who ever did Physics ends up doing anyway - when they're not as gifted as Richard Feynman(who also repaired tube radios in his youth). I later dropped out of Physics too, missing a couple semesters to finish.

I was walking down the street one day in 2005 and out of nowhere I met that friend who had fixed my amp back in 1994 and who got me into tubes in the first place.

I asked what he was doing, and he said he was repairing electronics in computers, notebooks and hi fi audio. I said "let's have a beer, I have an idea about tubes". He said "tubes? you've got to see some of the stuff I built after I repaired that amplifier of yours!". I went to his shop and it looked like frankensteins lair, tv tubes, military radio tubes, giant magnets and a guitar.

We opened shop in mid 2005. Word got out and soon folks from all over Brazil were sending us amps for repair, recording musicians were frequent at this shop, I'd walk in like an idiot and chat and then say "hey arent't you the guy from...". Money was still tight and I had to work 2 jobs to get bills paid, so I've been in and out of tube amps since, making amps for friends and doing repairs.

Below is our biggest trophy. The day I saw this amp at the shop, I knew we'd come a long way based on "a head full of dreams and a pocket full of empty".

[Jazz P Bass]

I said "yes" to a friend who had a Luxman R-1050.
Thr right channel did not work.
What a hoot that was.

[stormbringer]

Back in the early 90s, I bought "Inside Tube Amps" along with a Torres-modded Traynor amp. I was scared off by all of the warnings about lethal voltages to poke around in amps, so I built some custom hardwood cabinets instead. I collected a couple more books on tube amps and then bought an Allen Accomplice kit in 2009. That build went very well. I'm finally going to poke around in the Traynor amp that I bought off Dan Torres (will probably change the preamp design of the OD channel), after which I'll sell that amp to purchase more materials for new builds. Gotta put stuff in the hardwood cabs I built!

<--- my avatar shows the rear view of a custom basswood cabinet I built for my friend's Sovtek Mig 50. I didn't give the cabinet to my friend.

[Prairie Dawg]

I never had any interest in electronics as a kid even though it was pretty popular stuff-it was the Age of Heathkit and the ham radio club at the YMCA. I eventually picked up some mechanical skills and some years later went to school for a couple years and got my aircraft mechanic's license. That led to a move to Ohio in the middle of the winter of 1982-3 and a junk shop I would go past every day on the way to the airport. One day I went in, and there was a 1950 Philco radio on a shelf, playing. I thought it was wonderful and bought it.

Much to my surprise my spouse was as enthused as I was, and that led to collecting antique radios and learning how to repair them. It also led to some friendships with people who were also interested in radio gear, and starting to buy, sell, and collect parts and such. It was necessary to acquire those skills and test equipment in order to maintain and repair my radio collection, which is about 300 or so sets at present. Collecting radios is something that has led to many happy times and good friendships for us.

That led to a gradual exposure to guitar amps, and I started playing guitar again after a hiatus of about 25 years. I still suck. After we moved to Iowa by way of California-Ohio-Michigan-California-Iowa-Arkansas-Iowa I started repairing amps as a hobby and then when I lost one of my part time house husband jobs I started advertising and taking in work. There are three people in town who repair amps and two of them have no customer skills that I know of, so work comes my way pretty steady. I work out of my house and keep the overhead down and pass it on to the customers who seem to like what I do.

My first real, full on, built from raw metal project was a tube matcher which I'm real proud of. I constructed that because I needed a method of evaluating 6550s for the SVTs that i have been working on. I can hit them with more than 600v, which is needed. I've reconstructed a number of my own amps, and every time I do it I learn more skills. I don't know about you but I learn far more from my failures than my successes.

So I'm that 62 year old kid in the basement.

Best of all I get to hang out with musicians and they respect me even though my playing sucks and my hair is white where I still have it.