This page was created to document my interest in audio amplifiers with an intense slant towards vacuum tube guitar amplifiers. I am interested in the audio amplifier because of my lifelong ambition to learn how to play the electric guitar (I’m still working on that one).

My first amplifier was a Harmony tube amplifier probably about 5 watts class A power that I got for Christmas in the ninth grade. In my quest for more power (i.e. loudness) I bought a Lafeyette amplifier for real cheap (because it didn’t work). I found that I could take the speaker output from my Harmony amp into the input of the Lafayette and get a pretty loud sound although severely distorted. This worked great for playing the Grand Funk Railroad tunes of the day. I soon became known in my hometown as the guitarist that "always played with the fuzztone on". I had no way to turn it off!

Well, after some severe electrical shocks, including one that knocked me and my bass playing friend on our rears and also the lights out in the local gymnasium, I knew I needed a new amplifier. The only one I could remotely afford on my lavish paperboy salary was a Heathkit solid state. I ordered it and immediately started assembly when it arrived. I worked late into the night and learned an important lesson; Never leave the soldering iron plugged in and laying on the floor, especially if you plan to wake up in the middle of the night and walk barefoot through the dark to go to the bathroom!

I had two deadlines when I was building the Heathkit. One was the talent show audition coming up and the other was my High School electronics teacher who had decided that he could at least give me a "C" in the course if I successfully built the amplifier. On the day of the audition I was still doing the final assembly on the amp while a friend waited to drive me to the place where the rest of my band was already setting up to play. I quickly performed the power up testing that was in the Heathkit instructions and when I placed the tip of a screwdriver into the circuit where indicated, I did get the "pop" sound out of the speakers, but I also started picking up the local radio station as clear as any radio I had ever listened to.

There was no more time to figure this one out! We packed up the amp and went to the audition where we kept getting told to "turn down" by the old guy who ran the theatre arts department at the high school. That was too much for our budding rock ‘n’ roll band. We turned off everything and packed up while our quite large entourage of friends and groupies started making guttural sounds like barking dogs at the man who had tried to inhibit our creativity.

I next took the amplifier into my electronics class and submitted it for inspection. The teacher was critical of my soldering skills, but when I assured him it worked (even as a radio in that one instance) he passed me.

Right after that, someone published a scathing editorial about the guitar amplifier destroying the youth of our country and it was titled, "The Evil Amplifier". I cut the title from the newspaper and found it fit perfectly in the area where my Heathkit nameplate was. I installed it and felt the amplifier was finally finished and ready to do its thing.

I don’t remember what happened to the Harmony or Lafayette and the Heathkit disappeared from an apartment in Manitou Springs, Colorado. Thinking back, I’m convinced it was hocked by my roommates and so called friends.

It took me several years before I could afford another amp and then made a big mistake. I bought an all solid state Gallien Krueger 100 watt combo with two twelve inch Eminence speakers. The salesman told me it was as loud as a Marshall stack and much easier to move around. He also claimed it represented the future in guitar amps. It was loud as he claimed, but it never did sound right. It just didn’t sound musical (a term I’ve recently embraced). I had it for several years and sold it cheap to a fellow guitar player. I warned him about the harsh sound, but he was caught up in the sound power levels that it could produce. He soon traded it in.

Somewhere along the line I bought a Fender Champ II from a friend who needed money. It is an 18 watt class AB dual 6V6 amp with a master volume. It is not too bad and plenty loud. I modified the cabinet to accommodate a 12 inch speaker and it sounds decent for jamming and open mike nights at the local dive. You can buy it from my wife when I’m gone.

Recently I saved up enough money to get a ’65 Fender Deluxe Reverb Reissue all tube amplifier. It has a pretty sweet sound although slightly on the bright side. Someday I may play around with the components to make it sound older. Right now I’m following the old adage, "If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it".

I am also the proud owner of a 1964 Pre-CBS Blackface Bassman piggyback amp with speaker cabinet. It was built in November of that year (Fender became CBS on January 1^st, 1965). I haven’t been inside it to see what’s original or updated, but after the replacement of a ‘microphonic’ preamp tube, it sounds fairly decent and quiet. I would be surprised if no one had ever at least changed some filter caps in this amp.

That brings me to the present day. In the past few days I have experienced some revelations about my relationship with guitar amps and perhaps realized a regret; I could have been a contender, I mean guitar amp technician. I just didn’t pursue it. Of course, it’s never too late. Today, the ability to go on the internet and learn scads of information about amplifiers is very different than in the 70’s (altough now you can’t go to the drugstore and test your vacuum tubes and purchase new ones like you could do then). I started searching the internet about amplifiers and convinced myself that the best way to learn about them was to build and even repair them.

I came across Dan Torres’s website and found some vacuum tube amplifier kits. I was intrigued at the idea of building one of his Super Texan amps if I could only come up with the money. He wrote a book titled, "Inside The Tube Amplifier" and recommends it if you are going to build his amplifier kits.

I kept searching the web for a more affordable alternative and came across the AX84 site. This is a cooperative project to design and build ‘homebrew’ vacuum tube amplifiers. It has some tried and true designs for a class A amp called the P1. I started reading and downloading schematics and had pretty much convinced myself to send away for a complete parts kit from Doberman Music Products when I came across a related link to a guy that made a Fender Princeton clone with a few added features. My interest was peaked even more now that I had the plans to build a 6V6 based amplifier because I already had the tubes laying around my parts bin.

I downloaded his schematic and found that it was almost an exact copy of one I had in Aspen Pittman’s book, "The Tube Amplifier", except for the modifications he had made. I felt that this was a project I could accomplish and started looking for sources for parts. I came across Antique Electronic Supply and was elated when I found out they were in Tempe, Arizona. I live in Cave Creek which is several suburbs north of Tempe. I even found they had the Dan Torres book in stock so I put some rare gasoline in my car and drove down and bought it and have already read half way through in one weekend.

The AX84 site has a good theory of operation document for their P1 amplifier and I focused in on the tone control part of it. A typical tone control stack is described which has knobs for Bass, Middle and Treble. This is more than the simple ‘Tone’ control on the Princeton. I continued looking at websites and through books and found a schematic for a Fender Champ which used the three knob setup for the tone controls. I decided to build a Champ clone although base it on the Princeton clone with modifications I had found earlier. This was great! I would be building an amp from scratch and it would be somewhat unique if not original. I decided to build it as a piggyback head so I could experiment with different speaker setups.

On the repair side of my interest in audio amplifiers, I decided to offer my services to a few people I know who have broken amplifiers. Some of these are solid state, but I know I’ll learn things about amplifiers in general while working on them. The first one I fixed is a Peavey Mark IV Series bass amplifier that had no output. Next I will be working on a Randall 100 watt piggy back guitar amp that shuts down after being played loudly for a while. Another friend has an old Ampeg tube amp that is distorted, but I told him I am not quite ready for that yet. Hopefully, I’ll be able to help him soon after I learn a bit more. I’ve also built and repaired guitar effects units such as delays, fuzz and compressors. Visit the linked pages to read more about any of these activities.

Stay tuned to this page because I have bought all the parts to build my first homebuilt tube amp and will be documenting it here! While you're waiting you can cruise over to an excellent site for tube info, Aiken Amps and go to his "Tech Info page.