Affordable tweed champ clones?

[madbean]

Do you fellas have any tips for safety with this stuff? I kinda want to try building one now.

Here's how I worked safely on my (used daily) AC4 this week: unplug the amp, turn it on and let it sit for a while. After a bit, I was reading 10v on one of the plate sockets for the pre-amp tube, so I connected one end of a 10k 2W resistor to one of the plate resistors and the other end to chassis ground. I did this with some plastic covered clamps. Waited a bit longer then measured 0v on my DMM where I hooked the resistor to the plate. At that point I removed the circuit board and connections from the chassis using just one hand and measured the main decoupling cap directly with the DMM. Still read about .9v across the positive and negative there, so I discharged that directly to the chassis. Completely safe to handle at that point.

I was really meticulous about it, but there is no such thing as too careful I guess when it comes to high voltage / high current stuff. I've never tried probing a live amp, though. That is a bit scarier.