amp kit II

[pryde]

All great advice here on safe building. I would not let it deture you. Just practice the techniques mentioned and be alert and rested, and take your time. It is very rewarding when it comes together.

My advice: build a light-bulb limiter for the initial fire-up after building it. It will save valuable components if your wiring is wrong.

Funny I was going to build another amp in addition to my 5E3 but recently bought another egnater tweaker cause it is such a nice little practice amp.

Here is my 5E3 for some inspiration:



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[Hangingmonkey]

Interesting thread. I have always wondered, whats the benefit of twisting 2 wires together like in some of the pics. Ive done it myself in some of my pedals, the 9v wire wrapped against a ground wire. Apart from looking neater does it reduce noise at all?

[gordo]

Yupp.  Think of computer cable (twisted pair) and that's the idea.  It doesn't add "shielding" in the way coax does, but the two wires are at angles to each other (ideally 90 degrees) and aren't parallel.

[juansolo]

Go on, I'll throw mine into the mix too:

[pryde]

Interesting thread. I have always wondered, whats the benefit of twisting 2 wires together like in some of the pics. Ive done it myself in some of my pedals, the 9v wire wrapped against a ground wire. Apart from looking neater does it reduce noise at all?

Actually twisting heater wire together (green wire in my pic above) is best practice to reduce hum and noise in the circuit when amp building.

[gordo]

My advice: build a light-bulb limiter for the initial fire-up after building it. It will save valuable components if your wiring is wrong.

YES! I forgot about this. It's a regular fixture on my bench. I smoked an output transformer I paid good bucks for because I didn't have a fuse handy and hotwired it. The amp was going to be a Trainwreck and the whole project became a trainwreck. The bulb limiter was my next build and I use if for everything. This thing will save you a fortune in fuses alone and can be built in an old computer power supply. I'll dig up the scheme if anyone is interested.

[nzCdog]

My advice: build a light-bulb limiter for the initial fire-up after building it. It will save valuable components if your wiring is wrong.

YES! I forgot about this. It's a regular fixture on my bench. I smoked an output transformer I paid good bucks for because I didn't have a fuse handy and hotwired it. The amp was going to be a Trainwreck and the whole project became a trainwreck. The bulb limiter was my next build and I use if for everything. This thing will save you a fortune in fuses alone and can be built in an old computer power supply. I'll dig up the scheme if anyone is interested.

I'd be interested to see your schemo for that Gordo... I have an old PC I'm about to scrap, sounds like a handy tool!

[BRGPollen]

+1 to the schem for the limiter. 

I'm ok ...... I can quit any time I want to ........ (Denial!!!)

5e3 in sight or Marshall 18 watter!!!

[oldhousescott]

Here's one version of the limiter.

[pryde]

Here is another very simple LB limiter that will work fine and super cheap to build from any hardware store

[wgc]

Beautiful work! 

The only thing more addicting than building amps is building guitars.  Probably a blessing this house doesn't have a garage, like the last one did...

[jeffaroo]

lol i got the guitar build bug. im in the mid of building one and got the next 2 laid out before i finished this one. next one is gonna be a tele, maybe with a strat trem and P-90s. talk about a twist   

[juansolo]

I did the opposite. Or rather I had it built as I simply don't have the facilities and Wez is a bit of a ninja. I had this idea in my head and needed to see it realised...

This is a Strat with a Tele bridge (cut in half), Tele bridge pup and a single cut Tele-style upper bout. But it's mostly Strat proportions. Wiring was interesting as I ended up doing that bit. It's a 5 way with B-BN-M-MN-N. So you can get Tele sounds on 5-4 and Strat on 3-2-1



He's currently building me a super strat with a wrap-around on it... I had a couple of pups I didn't want to sell and nothing to put them into Work in progress (wood is just wiped down at the moment to show the grain, finish hasn't been finalised yet. We're going to see how black oil looks on an off-cut first otherwise it'll get painted):

[wgc]

Gorgeous!  I did a "super" tele 10 years or so ago, a little sacreligious but it played and sounded great.

Sorry for the derail, but I'd say it was worth it...!   . Good luck with the strat

[jeffaroo]

Beautiful !