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

[jrfrond]

Hmmm..... I kind of just fell into it, almost. I was interested in repairing things from a very young age. I used to love to go to the TV reapir shop or garage to watch. Always was interested in how things worked, even until today (which explains my penchant for cable shows such as Modern Marvels, How It's Made, Deconstructed, etc.). I built a couple of small Radio Shack project kits at first, like a crystal radio, then an AM/FM radio, etc. and learned how to solder. I started messing with guitars when I was around 12 after buying a book on guitar repair. Then amps about two years later. I just devoured as much reading material as I could, purchase a few tools and a VOM and tool it from there, learning as I went along, and I might add, blowing up some of my own stuff on the way. When I was 18, I got an actual tech job working for Berkey Technical, a photographic company, where I learned a lot more. Two years later I got a job at an MI repair shop, but the guy who owned it was a scheister, and at 21, I wound up opening my own repair shop, which lasted about 4 years. Worked in mil-spec assembly for awhile, took a few courses on electronics, and did lots of hands-on. Lo and behold, I've been making a living at it since. So it was a hobby that panned-out as a career. I wish I had stayed in school for engineering, but quit after the first year, mostly due to boredom, because the freshmen always got locked out of the good courses. Stupid move really. But, experience is the best teacher, and I'd worked at some great places along the way, and again, devoured as much information as I could. It didn't hurt that I'm also a musician and have good ears. It's also good that I worked on a pretty broad range of equipment along the way, but I was always interested in the minutia as well. So, I pretty much did this the Abe Lincoln way, to wit, self-taught. I did a lot of reading, listening and watching. I still do that as required, but I also do training and writing now. It's called "The Hard Way". However, at this point, I don't think I could exist in any other business. I've also tried this at the corporate level, and that was just awful. I just despise corporate politics. There's also another side of me that deals with the drum/percussion business, but that's a whole 'nother story.

One thing about this business I've learned: you must always be open to learning new technologies, or you'll be dead in the water. You also need to learn the business end. To those who have never run a business, it's more complex than it looks, sometimes more complex than the actual troubleshooting of gear.

[Prairie Dawg]

John, one thing that really helped me was a one year stint as a cable splicer for Ma Bell back in Jersey in the early seventies. One day the foreman pointed his finger at me and said "You. Get in your car and go to South River Central Office for the next two weeks. You're going to soldering school." Although it was mostly about beating lead sleeves and installing and removing lead splice covers, it was good training, and that training fixed a lot of leaky radiators in a lot of beaters I owned. Once you've soldered from a pot or with a torch and you see what goes on, it comes naturally and this has been very useful. Basic Electricity at A&P school helped some as well, and NC&I (navigation, communication and instrumentation) was also useful as I learned to do AN cable lacing. It's still fun to do that inside somebody's amp with my lifetime supply of lacing cord.

Re Abe Lincoln, he became one of the best and smartest lawyers Illinois has ever seen in that age or this, and, as was common on those days, "read the law" and apprenticed to a practicing lawyer. Had he stayed in Springfield, he would have retired a very wealthy man, for his clients were mostly the railroads.

[NorCalTuna]

thanks prairie, i'd never really appreciated what I was looking at while gleefully disassembling JAN parts. While learning more about cable lacing, I found this awesome document, which I suspect may provide some light reading for a few of us.

http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codeq/doctree/87394.pdf

[Prairie Dawg]

Good resource. AC43-13-1A was my bible, since revised but on page 11-62 and after it shows how wire bundle lacing is supposed to be done.

http://rgl.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_Library/rgAdvisoryCircular.nsf/list/AC%2043.13-1B/$FILE/Chapter%2011.pdf

[jrfrond]

I'd like to add that EVERY single place I worked along the way and every single experience was invaluable. During my year stint doing Mil-Spec assembly work in between jobs, the money sucked, but I learned a whole lot about soldering and other aspects of critical electronics. It all adds up, and THAT is the stuff they don't teach you in tech school.

[tedmich]

the exact OPPOSITE way to those really knowledgeable ones above...

UNemployment!

[Prairie Dawg]

I'd like to add that EVERY single place I worked along the way and every single experience was invaluable. During my year stint doing Mil-Spec assembly work in between jobs, the money sucked, but I learned a whole lot about soldering and other aspects of critical electronics. It all adds up, and THAT is the stuff they don't teach you in tech school.

It does add up, and it translates over to many other areas of life, where a disciplined and economical habit of thinking allows you to approach problems systematically. My old crew chief was always saying "think system, Robert, dammit!" and he was right-seeing things in isolation without understanding what their role is is not good use of time. The other thing he was big on was lightening the information load by eliminating things that are relatively simple to check and localizing the problem to as small a chunk of real estate as you can. AND having the appropriate technical information in front of you.

I've wrestled with a few turkeys in the amp world, and it always felt pretty good when I'd unraveled a problem that people thought couldn't be fixed, or something somebody had bodged. Each one of those was a great teaching moment, far better than any amount of routine parts replacement.

One of the most difficult troubleshooting problems I ever encountered was on a Mitsubishi MU2 that decided it wouldn't schedule forward pitch on one engine. Reverse was fine but it wouldn't work no matter what we did so we took the engine off and back to the shop. The prop governor checked out good on the bench as did all the other components-we even tested the prop on another airplane- and I went over all the prop governing system schematics. Finally in desperation I called an old friend from the coast and he says "There's a check valve in a drilled passage under the prop governor. Look there." I had to make a special tool to remove it because it was the diameter of a pencil lead. Sure enough it was stuck, and it was not on any of the system schematics. It was in the parts catalog at $150.00 though, and I learned from that to have the parts catalog right next to the maintenance manual. Two weeks later a Metroliner came in with exactly the same problem and I was Johnny on the spot and fixed it in three hours. That was the only two times I ever saw that valve fail in 12 years in the field.

[jrfrond]

No one likes the dogs, but it DOES feel good AND you learn a lot when (or IF) you eventually solve them. One thing I have learned in this business as well is that the ARE some things that are unrepairable, which is DIFFERENT than items which are not economically feasible to repair, and you need to differentiate in the business world.

[Prairie Dawg]

They are superb teaching tools. I tell my students that minds are like iron-weak and brittle unless and until heated red hot and hammered in the forge.

[Stadler Guitars]

I started dipping into amps at the Gruhn Guitars repair shop. The long time guy, Ben Burgett, who worked on the amps was leaving and I saw my chance! I asked him to show me everything he could and I started reading. There were a lot of burnt out caps and tubes to replace and the Thunderfunk book really helped get me through it. I still read a lot and learn something new out of the RCA tube manual every time I open it.

[John_H]

This is a great thread. Is it OK to participate if I don't have a basement?

When I was about Ten years old I had a Tandy 10 in 1 kit given to me. I was curious about all things electrical and played with that thing constantly. It wasn't long before I had all ten projects memorized. Good ol' Dad hooked me up with a bigger kit right away, and it was "game-on" for me after that. I got pretty good at fixing things like small appliances, power tools, whatever was broken.

The first tube gear that I worked on was an old Johnson CB radio that someone had given me when I was 12. I got it working, and it sparked an interest in Amateur Radio. The local community college was offering a preparatory class for the novice exam, so Dad got me enrolled in night school at thirteen years old, and taxied me to my classes two nights a week. The guy who taught the class was really good. I learned a bunch from him. After that I wasn't afraid to try to fix anything. I liked working on TV's and Hi-Fi's, along with my Ham gear and guitar amp. My interest faded though, and by the time I was 18 I didn't mess with it much at all.

Here's where we fast forward about 20 years to the mid 1990's, My Daughter the punk rocker needed a better amp, and I came across an Ampeg B-15 that "didn't work" for next to nothing. Suddenly I was once again obsessed with the stuff. I had all but totally forgot how much I liked fixing gear, and building things. As I sit here typing I'm surrounded by homebuilds, and converted PA's, and Hi-Fi's. I'm a woodworker by trade so I build my own cabinets as I need them. I dig building guitars, and winding pickups, but it never seems like there is enough time to fit it all in.

I love the smell of an amplifier warming up. I'm the 53 year old kid out soldering in the garage.

I used to read the old ampage regularly. It was cool to find a forum like this. (Thanks tboy) Every day's a school day when you read these pages.

[greekie]

Ever since I can remember as a kid, I've always bin curious, and as my mother said "You're never bored; you always find something to do". I took apart almost everything in the house. Carefully reassembling it again, so I wouldn't get grounded for ruining my parents radios or TV. When I got into primary school I loved learning about all kinds of stuff, but when it came to being quiet, I wasn't very good. I got thrown out of class often, as I would get bored when I had done my assignments and I had to wait for my class mates to finish theirs. Some doctors diagnosed me with ADHA and at the same time my mother had me tested at Mensa, who wanted me as a member. Think how knowing those two things as a 8 year old can mess up your mind.

Fast forward to my 9th birthsday - I got a Super Nintendo as a birthsday present, and I took it apart when no ones was watching and drew how the insides looked and wrote down all the part numbers. I played a game called Star Wing and became the champion in my home country of Denmark in the SNES system in that game. The month after my mom got our first PC, and that really got me started. I was learning how to program, installing the wrong drivers, having to re install so many times that by the time we had Windows 95, I knew the serial key because I had reinstalled the operating system so many times. When I was 13 I founded my own company with an 18 year old guy I found after I placed an ad in the local paper looking for someone of legal age to start a company fixing computers. 3 months later I got another job as well, at a computer cafe. The owner liked my attitude and invited me to come in my own spare time to his other job at the teachers' college. He was the IT administrator, and he wanted to take me in as a trainee. I was the country's youngest at the time, and a lot of news papers covered it, which was pretty fun, and kinda making up for the geeky part with regards to courting my female class mates. At that time they upgraded their systems, and I got to keep all the old hardware, including some now ancient stuff with Motorola-chips on them. I had just gotten my first soldering iron at age 14 and I removed all the resistors and capacitors and kept them in a small drawer system my dad had bought me. When I was 15 I started playing guitar again. I had done that from age 5 to 8, but now I was in the gymnasium, and it was time to stick it to the man and play some punk rock. My mother was (and still is) a teacher at the same gymnasium I went to, and that had the priviledge of being able to borrow musical equipment during holidays. The bass combo didn't work when we got home with it, and my dad took at look at it. Mind you, he is a doctor, but somehow he got it to work, so my band could rehearse. That impressed me a lot.

My fathers father had a long military career, and when I came to visit him and my grand mother, he was always doing some kind of project that he loved me to take part of. He built their house in 1955, now in the middle of the nation's capitol Copenhagen, and now he was rewiring the basement, to allow for a new washing mashine to be installed. He let me do as much of it as I wanted under his supervision. After that, he taught me stuff about Ohm's law, how stuff around the house and amplifiers worked, etc. My father had always been a hifi enthusiast, so when I got home from the visit, he filled in the blank spots, and that's where it all took off - I wanted to build something for my self.

First it was a 2204-kinda amp for my punk rock band. Then it was modifying a friend of mine's equipment. Then it was opening my own shop as a way to pay for my university degree. And now (still in the university) it's a cool way to keep my hobby alive. I've toured most of Europe with my band, played with a lot of cool people. Now as I'm finishing my last years as as PhD student in political communication and working in the Danish parliament (take that ADHD), it's a cool way to still be connected to my friends in the musical industry, and do something productive that's, thanks to these fun tubes, cool transistors and most of all THIS FORUM, still a lot of fun!

[deci belle]

Thanks for the wonderful stories! I've only done this a few years since I got back into electric guitar.

I gotta be able to fix whatever it is I have. If it's an amp, so be it. I lucked into an old BF Showman a little over a year ago so now I've had something easy to learn on.

In the seventies I had a mid fifties Fender (White) Hawaiian steel guitar and the matching single-ended combo amp. I never knew what I had (even though I could never get it to break up…). I never opened it up, but I did replace one of the tubes once, which was as easy as looking in a box loaded with tubes because my dad is a ham operator. The steel/amp was stolen shortly before I got back into electric guitars about five years ago— boy, that woulda been a fun amp to dig into!

[soundguruman]

In order to get started building, fixing, modifying guitar amps,
You need to be slightly deranged.

You see the label? on the back of the amp? that says:
"no user serviceable parts inside, refer servicing to qualified personal."
Are you brave enough to ignore that warning? Cause if you are not, you have no business going any further than this post.

(I void warranties) -SGM

[R ski]

Around the on set of the 90’s, I had about 6 years experience with solid state over drive guitar timber using op amps feeding into low power chip audio amplifiers. The tube interest began with a DIY 12AX7 preamp the fed into my solid state. The 1st stage tube did have some softening effect on my tone, but I dreamt of an all tube amp that roared with authority. The ironic part was I ignored vacuum tube theory during my high school years during the early 70’s and taken all of my Dads home built tube Hi Fi gear to some old radio shop after he passed in the early 80’s, boy losing those trannies and 6L6’s was a financial set back during those years.

About 92 I moved to Toronto to secure employment to support my family, no luck with local employment. I picked a house that had an eight track recording studio and become friends with that recording enthusiast. It was a given to him that I could fix his mixer and other analogue gear. Moreover there was an old Hi Fi power amp chassis sitting in his collection of yard round ups. I cascaded the two preamp tubes together and got some kind of distortion but not the Holy Grail we all chase after.

Later on I plugged into some beat up old Marshall in his studio and was moved by the sound of that amp (2203), so I wire traced that beast and used that configuration with the parts salvaged from the 10 Watt Hi Fi amp. Lots of issues surfaced and taken some effort at resolving them, mainly hum and soft break up.
Learned to organize my builds in terms of layout and chassis, my next project is to build a clone of the Orange Tiny terror configuration