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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
Building a solid state amp
Building a solid state amp
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K_Hungus
10 posts
Sep 28, 2011
9:59 AM
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Hey all, I got a question about an amp building project. I have two Jensen P8R speakers and a low budget.
Can anybody advise a good schema for a solid state harp amp? My old man will be building the amp primarily. I know sheit about electronics. He already build me a Fender 5F1 replica, it kicks ass, but I remember the transformer being quite expensive. He said if I wanted a solid state he had enough transformers laying around. That’s why my preference for a solid state this time.
Any thoughts? I remember he stated that that Fender circuit was as basic as you’ll ever get, so a bit more challenging circuit is no problem
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isaacullah
1605 posts
Sep 28, 2011
10:08 AM
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Your best bet will be to go over to the solid state guitar amp forum (www.ssguitar.com) and start asking questions. I've been a member over there for quite awhile, and the folks over there have been super helpful for all of my own builds. The advice you will get is to build some sort of chipamp, and fool around with preamp circuitry until you find something that you feel sounds good for harp.
To that end, if you go to this thread over there (http://www.ssguitar.com/index.php?topic=933.msg5921#msg5921), you will be able to read details of my own solid state harp amp that I built some time back. To be honest, I don't use it much anymore. This is not because I don't like the tone, but because I skimped a bit on the heat sink, and it over heats really quickly and the chip goes into thermal shut down. Not only is this not good for the chip, but it means the sound cuts out when you are in the middle of your most heated playing! I keep meaning to buy a beefed up heat sink and get it up and running, but it hasn't been too high on my priority list.
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K_Hungus
11 posts
Sep 28, 2011
10:32 AM
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Thanks for the advise man. I just watched your project on YT, too bad the sound quality aint so great. How is the distortion? I'll go pay that site a visit!
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isaacullah
1608 posts
Sep 29, 2011
11:03 AM
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Wow, yeah, I just re-watched that video, and I see what you mean. That was when I was still making videos with my little digital camera (with it's shitty mic). Also, my playing was way shitty back then! It's always a trip to watch such old videos! The professor tweed preamp was really good sounding for harp, but it was always dirty. Since that video, I put in another preamp that has more variation (from clean to dirty), and I think it'd more versitile for the things I do. But to be honest, I just haven't played that amp in a long while... I should replace the heatsink and break it out again...
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Tuckster
887 posts
Sep 29, 2011
11:24 AM
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My first thought is: what's wrong with the 5F1 rig? Is it S.S replica or tube?
5F6H will hopefully contribute his knowledge to the subject.
I'm not sure it's that much cheaper to go S.S. A lot of the money goes to transformers,filter caps & heatsinks. Having a x-former helps cut cost. Is he going to hand wire it or use a printed circuit board? In the long run for harp,you might as well go the tube route. Lots of info on tube circuits on the 'net.
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isaacullah
1609 posts
Sep 29, 2011
11:40 AM
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@Tuckster: It depends. Solid state amps can be made more easily from salvaged parts you get out of audio equipment you can pick up for cheap at the Goodwill. This is because most of that kind of equipment is solid state too, and thus you can find a lot of the components you need. I got my power trannies, and that kind of stuff that way for way cheaper than buying new, but I had to improvise a dual tranny set up. But yeah, new ones are pretty steep, especially the nice toroidal ones that a lot of SS amp builders prefer. Like all DIY amp builds, in the long run, you usually don't end up saving that much money. IMO, building any kind of amp from scratch should be done as a hobby you enjoy doing in it's own right. Otherwise, if you are looking only to save money, you are better off just buying a used existing amp and doing some small mods to it that don't involve replacing the most expensive parts (trannies, heatsinks, filter caps, etc.).
The one thing I really like about solid state is that it's way easier to build an amp that con go from clean to dirty at the same volume. This is because you get all your distortion and grit from the preamp. Solid state amp building is ALL about preamp design. The power amp is almost always going to be some sort of IC chip, and will simply serve as a way to make the tone from the preamp louder. In that regard, the chips are really efficient, and so it's easier to build a high wattage solid state amp than an equivalent wattage tube amp. This is why there are so many 5 watt tube amp designs out there for DIY, and not so many bigger ones. You are certainly right, however, that there is A LOT more info out there on building DIY tube amps than there is for DIY SS amps.
Actually, I think that the best of both worlds can be achieved by mixing a tube preamp section with a chip amp power section. The main problem is that they have very different voltage requirements. You can , however, make a "spacecharged" tube preamp with a 12ax7 running at 12v (look up the "valvecaster"), and that's something I'm really interested in building in the future...
Cheers,
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== I S A A C ==
View my videos on YouTube!
Visit my reverb nation page!
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