Friday, January 30, 2009

Guitar amp project, a long time in the making

I know it's not beer related, but I thought I'd post on this anyhow since I'm proud of myself. What you see to your left is a guitar amp I built from scratch. The head is all tube, Class A with an EL34 power tube. The head itself is made with 1/2" plexiglass. I had it fabricated at one of those sweet plastics places on Canal St. I built it a while back, so I can't remember how many watts it is exactly. It has two gain stages, one of which can be switched out for a cleaner tone. The bass/treble tone stack can also be switched out - a feature I added so that you could conceivably test out the audio qualities of different preamp tubes more accurately. It sounds pretty cool, though it does buzz quite a bit at really high gain. I wish I knew how to fix that.

The cabinet is what I finished recently. I had the wood cut forever, but just recently got around to assembling it. It's a 2x10" cab with two different speakers. One Fender, one unknown. I wrapped it in some upholstery that I bought a long time ago and finished it with some antique looking upholstery tacks. They don't quite match together - the head looks almost like some kind of 70's arena rock deal and the cabinet looks like it should have a victrola on top of it playing Take The A Train. But I'm proud of the work and at least now I have an amp that I can play out of in the house.

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