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Building a guitar amp?

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sjaguar13

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

Something like this:
**broken link removed**
 
sjaguar13 said:
How hard would it be to build a simple guitar amp with 1 or 2 inputs, distortion, and reverb?

Something like this:
**broken link removed**

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.
 
sjaguar13 said:
How muchy is it costing you to build the lead amp?

It's hard to say, the PCB came from https://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.
 
I play Bass and lead too!

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.
 
Re: I play Bass and lead too!

Velvet Leopard said:
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 .

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.
 
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