This is the first steel guitar amp chassis manufactured here on the island from my AutoCad drawings. It is the first custom amp being built completely from scratch including the chassis (click to enlarge). This new line of amps will probably be based on the Fender AA794 Vibroverb – Stevie Ray Vaughn’s amp of choice.
On the right is my ho-made (and I da ho) Fender Champ II clone.
It’s currently getting a 5Y3 tube rectifier make-over as the current solid state rectification allows the B+ voltage to be too high which makes the 6V6s run way hot. The black box covers the high voltage electrolytic caps for safety, utility and aesthetics. (Update: ended up just swapping out the transformer for the correct one. The original transformer was actually for a Super Champ.
Here is the completely rebuilt circuit board assy (yes I built this twice!). All of the turrets (the little metal posts that the components mount on) were hand mounted. Click on images to supersize them. The new circuit will provide audio in/out looping for effects, noise gate and standby switch with delayed high voltage relay to save output tubes.
Update 4/26/2013 – Almost finished the electronics – come to find out the little OEM Fender input jack p/n 011028 has two separate outputs – those tricky bastards! so my stock Switchcraft input jack wasn’t working. I fooled it by connecting directly to the plate bypass capacitor of the first 7025 amplifier tube. Sounds reasonably good I think. See inset for schematic of the problem:
Here's the problem with the original circuit (click to enlarge)
The next project is aesthetics – I have 2 stainless steel plates that I had cut by On-line Metals.com that I will be punching out and silk-screening the labels on with epoxy based silk-screen paint. There will be both a front and back trim plate to fit within an original Fender Champ enclosure that I bought on eBay for $35.
Here’s a video snippet of the final product so far – juiced up a little bit to start with my GNX3 guitar processor but I play some dry ( no effects) at the end of the video. I do plan on adding some sort of pre-amp/processor internally as soon as I get the cabinet finished. So yeah, this was a three month pain in the ass, but learned a million things not to do when I build the next one. This particular amp if it were vintage would retail for around $1,000 at a guitar store. I built it for about $200 in parts and about $427,000 in time.
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