Powerful DIY Bass Amp

[stratmanadam458]

Hey guys i'm an avid musician ( I play Guitar and Drums) and soon i will be taking up Bass. I 'm getting a Fender Jazz Highway One Bass for X-Mas and i want to build a powerful tube amp for it because a Bass tube amp is very hard to fine for a goo price and since my dad is gonna burn like 800 bucks on the bass ( I'll probably have to buy half of it anyway) i was thinking of building my own amp. Don't bother me about beginner stuff because i have plenty of resources to help me. My uncle is an electronic engineer and so is my science teacher. I wanna build a very powerful bass amp for passive electronic pickups.

[Steve Conner]

The hardest part of a DIY tube bass amp is finding the large tubes and transformers you need at a good price. Store-bought amps are expensive because the transformers cost money to make and ship around the country. So get back to us when you've done that.

PS, yes I agree my PT is probably too small

[loudthud]

That's a pretty open ended question. What type of music do you play and how loud? What speaker configuration is required by the first question?

The first thing you should do is go down to any big music stores near you, discuss your requirements, and see what they try to sell you. Try several stores because some salesmen will just try to sell you what's on the floor. See if you can find a salesman that actually plays bass professionally or semi-professionally.

I have worked professionally with electrical engineers for 29 years. About half have trouble soldering two wires together. They want to fix it in the software. Less than a handfull could build an amp half as good as I can. They are good at what they do, but when it comes to building things, they hand it off to me. Often times I had to tell them why their ideas wouldn't work and sent them back to their computers. (They don't use drawing boards anymore, or even know how to draw)

[Marc]

Hey Adam,
I've got a mostly stripped KMD 100 chassis with a Pt and achoke on it. It's been wating for a project that's not gotten started yet. Have you got a chassis already? Let me know if you're interested....
I think the PT is still good...
Marc

[kldguitar]

which tube you used

The hardest part of a DIY tube bass amp is finding the large tubes and transformers you need at a good price. Store-bought amps are expensive because the transformers cost money to make and ship around the country. So get back to us when you've done that.

PS, yes I agree my PT is probably too small

which tube you used? how many power Bass amp?

[kldguitar]

sorry we have not chassis yet, but if it is good we can do

Hey Adam,
I've got a mostly stripped KMD 100 chassis with a Pt and achoke on it. It's been wating for a project that's not gotten started yet. Have you got a chassis already? Let me know if you're interested....
I think the PT is still good...
Marc

sorry we have not chassis yet, but if it is good we can make one chassis.
how about your Bass amp? I'm interesting in

[R.G.]

I have worked professionally with electrical engineers for 29 years. About half have trouble soldering two wires together. They want to fix it in the software. Less than a handfull could build an amp half as good as I can. They are good at what they do, but when it comes to building things, they hand it off to me. Often times I had to tell them why their ideas wouldn't work and sent them back to their computers. (They don't use drawing boards anymore, or even know how to draw)

On the other hand, sometimes, just sometimes you run into an EE who is grounded in practicality, understands audio, and musical gear in particular.

I have worked professionally with electronics techs that can't solder, too.

It is blindingly obvious that one horse can run faster than another horse. But which one? Details matter.

Just because it's true that not all EEs are good at building, it's likewise true that just because a person's an EE, it does not mean they're NOT good at building, either.

R.G.

[mooreamps]

(They don't use drawing boards anymore, or even know how to draw)

No, we don't use drawing boards anymore. For pcb layout, we use cad packages like Orcad, or Viewlogic. For point-to-point work that does not require a generated netlist or pcb layouts, I use VISIO.

-g

[kldguitar]

I use protel

I use protel to design sechmatic and pcb layout of tube guitar amp
http://www.kldguitar.com

[David Schwab]

On the other hand, sometimes, just sometimes you run into an EE who is grounded in practicality, understands audio, and musical gear in particular.

Back when I worked at ITT (in the late 70's) the engineers there were always amazed that I built audio circuits.. they'd say "how do you do that?"

I was amazed that they didn't know! But then I couldn't build the microwave, radio and computer stuff they were doing. So I guess it's all about what your background is. But a few were audiophiles and knew how to make stuff.

I use Adobe Illustrator for drawing and DesignWorks for PCB layouts.

Getting back to the topic... you can't get more bang for the buck than with a solid state bass amp. There's a used Peavey head here in a shop like my first big amp.. 400 Watts, and it's $150! You can't build a head for that cheap.