How hard would it be to build a simple guitar amp with 1 or 2 inputs, distortion, and reverb?

Something like this:

 

Very simple, it's only a low power single ended valve amplifier, there are LOADS! of designs on the web you can download. As with all valve amplifiers, the most expensive parts are the transformers - you would do the reverb with opamps, not valves.

If you are happy with a solidstate amplifier, I'm currently building a bass guitar amplifier and a lead guitar amplifier, using commercially available preamp PCB's. The bass amp has compression and a 6 band graphic, the lead amp has two switchable inputs (for overdrive and clean) and reverb.

 

How muchy is it costing you to build the lead amp?

 

It's hard to say, the PCB came from http://www.majelectronic.co.uk/, it's listed at the bottom of the 'Spare Parts' section. It doesn't use anything exotic, just basic opamps - the dearest parts are probably all the pots and the reverb unit (which I bought from Maj as well).

At the moment I'm concentrating on the Bass amp - my daughter plays Bass - I only ordered the Lead amp as I thought the boards were very good value, and it might come in handy one day!. I also ordered the 50W power amp boards, but I've since managed to get hold of three Maplin MOSFET 100W power amp boards, so I'll probably use those instead.

I have fully assembled both preamp boards, the bass one is now mounted on a front panel and I've had my daughter test it - the lead amp I've yet to mount, but I've tried a signal generator through it and a scope on the output - the soft and hard clipping look to be working fine. I haven't yet plugged the reverb unit in and tested that - there were already too many wires flying about :lol:

BTW, MAJ don't seem to have updated their website, the keyboard preamp is sold out, as is the bass preamp listed - they supplied me a more expensive one (I had to pay more) which includes a six band graphic.

 

Hewwo. The leopard plays the bass as well, Nigel. I would love to build my own custom Amp for my black four string. Could you perhaps lend me some resource sites and ideas. I would be glad to keep you posted on the building of it. Thankies if you can.

 

The compressor in my bass amplifier uses a CA3094 IC, which I eventually ordered from where I got the PCB - but first I did a google search for it. Interestingly one of the hits was for Laney - they have all their circuit diagrams available on the net. The site is actually password protected, and you need an account and password to access it - but, the files themselves are not protected at all (just the index to them), you can happily list the directories and download the circuits :lol:

Have a look at http://www.laney.co.uk/html/Downloads/Services/.

Although I haven't found exactly the same circuit as my PCB on the Laney site, it is very similar to some of them - the company it came from are close friends of Laney, and provide spares and service for them.

I surmise that they were planning releasing amplifiers of their own (and may well have done so!), and that these PCB's are ones they had left over.

 

take a look at this

http://www.kbapps.com/tubeamps.html