Old guy returning with a question, OEM amp manufacturers?

[mlove3]

Haven't been on ampage in years, wanted to know if anyone here has used an OEM to manufacture your amp design?
thanks

[loudthud]

I talked to a couple of guys from Arkansas at the Dallas Guitar show last weekend. They had some amps and speaker attenuators that they had manufactured in China. One amp was a solid state rectified Champ in a small tweed box that they were selling for $200. The guy told me that anything you send to China will get copied. They were happy with the quality though, like 2 oz. copper on the PCB's and torriod transformers. One of their attenuators had the brand name KLD Guitar on it instead of their name.

[mlove3]

I talked to a couple of guys from Arkansas at the Dallas Guitar show last weekend. They had some amps and speaker attenuators that they had manufactured in China. One amp was a solid state rectified Champ in a small tweed box that they were selling for $200. The guy told me that anything you send to China will get copied. They were happy with the quality though, like 2 oz. copper on the PCB's and torriod transformers. One of their attenuators had the brand name KLD Guitar on it instead of their name.

I've contacted KLD, I got the impression they wanted a commitment for a relatively big build. The champ is probably KLDs build rebranded.Their stuff does look pretty solid.
Do you remember the name of the Arkansas company? thanks

[R.G.]

The guy told me that anything you send to China will get copied. They were happy with the quality though, like 2 oz. copper on the PCB's and torriod transformers.

Our Workhorse amplifiers were manufactured in China, some years ago. They had... 2-Oz copper, 0.093" thick PCBs, toroidal transformers, and some other non-normal (for the time) stuff . We can look forward to the other improvements showing up, I guess.

I feel flattered.

[Amp Kat]

Are these them RG ? Workhorse amp

Did you use OT toroidal too with DC servo or just straight up ?

[mlove3]

Our Workhorse amplifiers were manufactured in China, some years ago. They had... 2-Oz copper, 0.093" thick PCBs, toroidal transformers, and some other non-normal (for the time) stuff . We can look forward to the other improvements showing up, I guess.

I feel flattered.

How did you establish a relationship with the amp manufacturer? Was it KLD? Don't see the amp on your website, didn't sell?

thanks

[R.G.]

Are these them RG ?
Did you use OT toroidal too with DC servo or just straight up ?

Yep, that's one of them, the 2x12 60W version.

And that's a shortened blast of the comments we got. I was able to put in some things that corrected some deficiencies in most of the amps I've ever played. Unfortunately, a new amp brand that did not blather on about how it's just like some historical/hyped amp will get that from people who don't stop to listen to them.

It's funny - most of the useful stuff in the Workhorse amps is not apparent just looking at the outside. The cabinet is interlocked and glued hardwood plywood, and the baffle board is glued into the surround. The empty cab would support the weight of the front end of an average car without crushing. The PCB was thick, and thick copper, and further stiffened with steel ribs to keep it from flexing. The tube sockets and all controls were mounted on flying leads, so they did not have the issues that PCB naysayers usually present.

The amps had a lot of features intended for easy servicing. The back panel exposed the entire circuit board, all the wires to the controls, switches, tubes, and transformers. For any part replacement not on the PCB, you didn't even have to remove the chassis. A bum tone pot could be replaced in five minutes by snipping off the wires, putting a new pot and resoldering the wires. Ditto switches and tube sockets.

If you had to unsolder something from the PCB, you did have to remove the chassis from the cabinet, but a back plate exposed the solder side of all the parts on the PCB, so it didn't need to be removed from the chassis. And the cab had glued-in supports so it rested in place with the amp on its face or sitting up, so it could be inserted or removed without the use of an extra arm to hold it up.

The transformer windings were all fuse protected. To date, I still haven't heard of anyone killing a transformer. There was an inrush limiter on the AC power that prevented surges from popping things. It took moving two wires on Fastons to change from 120Vac to 240Vac, and the transformer was rated for 50/60Hz.

There was a bleeder resistor on all the high voltage caps to bleed them down for safe servicing, and an LED which showed when the caps were charged. An open choke or resistor in the string was announced by dark LEDs downstream.

The entire circuit was star grounded on the PCB. It was *very* hum-free.

There was a 9V*DC* output on the amp for powering pedals.

The much-maligned "hubcaps" (and they were patterned after hub caps, a bit) were a suspended treble spreader. There are various beam blockers and other things to block the beaming of treble out of the center of a 12" speaker. This one actually spread the treble out instead of just absorbing it. So the sound was "normal" for about 120 degrees horizontally and vertically in front of the speakers. You didn't have to choose between you hearing the treble and the audience hearing it.

There's more.

It was a fun experiment. What we found was that most guitarists won't try an off-brand amp unless it's (a) sold as a souped up copy of something and (b) very, very expensive.

We never made ones and twos. We ordered manufacturing lots of them. We sold all we made, and made money on it. The bummer is that when we counted up the costs and returns, it was just not as much as we could make doing other things. It was the right decision, but it's still frustrating. We still get the occasional call looking for them.

For all their wanting to look like no-rules-for-me bad boys, guitarists are incredibly conservative about their equipment.

[loudthud]

I'm curious what kind of quantitys or dollar figures does it take to get things moving.

[Steve Conner]

Sorry RG, but the hubcaps do look silly.

[R.G.]

No need to apologize. I'm the engineer, not the marketing manager or aesthetics guru.

To me, something is beautiful if it works well , is reliable, and is affordable, and does not pretend to be something it is not. There are entirely too many things that miss one of those. I view the external look as something that gets sprayed/trowelled/glued on after the Big Four are taken care of.

That's going to get some interest replies, I'd guess; but I have some personal experience with things that are beautiful and elegant, but either nonfunctional, unreliable, or too expensive to bear, as well as pretending to be what it's not. That wears thin quickly.

I've been reading a book on the arms and armor of the middle ages in England, and it got over a bit into civilian clothing. I'm guessing that most people would think a guy wearing a codpiece was silly, but there was a time when a man was not smartly dressed without one.

I wanted to paint them pink.

...er, the grilles, not the codpieces...

[Steve Conner]

The hubcaps or the codpieces? :-O

[Enzo]

I think a codpiece is different from a piece of cod. Innit?

[R.G.]

Depends. I understand that at the time bathing was not popular, nor laundry, so they may have smelled similar, and with similar magnitude.

Just a suspicion.

[Enzo]

And I don't even want to think about what "red herring" must mean then...