modify solidstate to tube?

[supaflytnt]

hello everyone again, another stupid question for you. I have a mid 90's fender delux 1x12 combo solid state, sounds better with my strat than any of my other guitars so its kinda limited, anyway here is my question

is it possible to modify a solidstate amp to be tube or should I just try to salvage any parts out of it i can for a tube project?

thanks guys im just tryin to get all my ducks in a row for my build

[unparalleled]

hello everyone again, another stupid question for you. I have a mid 90's fender delux 1x12 combo solid state, sounds better with my strat than any of my other guitars so its kinda limited, anyway here is my question

is it possible to modify a solidstate amp to be tube or should I just try to salvage any parts out of it i can for a tube project?

thanks guys im just tryin to get all my ducks in a row for my build

You have one useable tube ( if that model has one tube), everything else is not compatible with such a project.
You could however use the chassis and cabinet to build a new tube amp into.

[R.G.]

is it possible to modify a solidstate amp to be tube or should I just try to salvage any parts out of it i can for a tube project?

Is it possible? Yes. It's possible to modify anything into anything if you want it bad enough and are willing to sink enough money and time into it. The US government makes sow's ears out of silk purses all the time.

In fact, there is a certain amount of goodness involved. To me, electronics, in the form of setting up, wiring and testing a circuit, is almost trivial. Kind of like a more pleasurable way to spend time than doing crossword puzzles. What's hard is the mechanical stuff - finding and procuring or building a chassis, enclosure, speaker, etc. then doing the tolex and such. In a way, there's some freedom in taking a solid state amp and converting it to tubes.

I first proposed this as a "soul transplant" for a small combo about eight years ago in one of the Vox forums. What you do is to
1. Remove the chassis from the amp.
2. Locate the power switch and power wiring. A good power switch, fuse, power cord, etc. is worth while, and is a PITA to deal with. It's too simple to be fun and too important to just wing it.
3. Remove everything else from the chassis. All of it.
4. Now you can start putting your tube amp in what's left. Use metal panels cut to size and bolted down over any sizeable openings that you can't use for the tube amp.

[supaflytnt]

ok so it sounds like the pots and circuitry are possibly unuseable?

[unparalleled]

ok so it sounds like the pots and circuitry are possibly unuseable?

Valve amps run on high voltage, SS amps run on low voltage.
All the pots are of lower resistances, all the capacitors are low voltage.
RG has correctly outlined the only parts useable.
You would be better off building a kit amplifier.

[supaflytnt]

again thankyou for the info

[Enzo]

Oh, a 250k pot is a 250k pot, but really even if you salvage a couple of the controls, everything else won;t be much use. SO think of it as total even if you save a couple parts.

Imagine you have a car, and you want to convert it into a boat.

[Steve Conner]

Some of the old SS Fenders were very nicely built. They had real wood cabinets rather than dreadful particle board, heavy gauge chassis, and so on. A friend of mine had a London Reverb kicking around and he always pestered me to convert it to a tube amp for him.

I couldn't be bothered and besides, it sounded fairly good as SS amps go. The internal build quality was great too, with big hefty TO3 transistors, screw terminal filter caps, and a full size reverb tank. It could be hooked up to a bass cabinet and used as a bass amp in an emergency. All in all, it seemed a shame to gut it.

I don't know if this still applies to the 90s models, this amp looked 80s era.

[J M Fahey]

What's good about these newer Fender combos is that the chassis is very often made of aluminum , so you already have a relatively easy chassis to modify without heavy tools, and , obviously, it fits perfectly into your cabinet .
The downside is that it isn't *that* strong, so don't overload it with heavy iron, but a very usable 18W project or thereabouts isn't heavy and will provide lots of tube pleasure.
Keep it simple though, don't try to fill all the panel holes, a classic 2 to 4 knobber will do great.
You can even build a 5 Watter AX84 or similar, for personal enjoyment.
The sound will be very good, you can crank it, the works.

[R.G.]

On panels:

I built my brother in law a tube amp on a salvaged SS amp chassis a few years back. Wound up with too many holes in the panel, as well as the problem of lettering.

Did you know that places that make trophies generally engrave the plates with a CNC laser machine - at least they do in these parts. The quasi-standard for that industry is a desktop machine that will do things up to 20" to 24" in one dimension so they can gang-engrave multiple plates and then shear them apart.

Make up graphics for a front panel with lettering and hole locations matching the ones you want to use from the selection of locations provided by the older and hole-ier chassis, then have a panel engraved at a trophy shop. It cost me about $20 for a silver-on-black panel, took two days, and covered up those other holes.

Another thing you can do is to first note the hole locations you want to use, then cover the whole panel with thick aluminum tape. On top of that put a laser-printed panel label on paper or mylar film.On top of that either spray clear coat, or do a layer of thick clear tape, or put a thin panel of plexiglass.