I started playing guitar in early 1994. I spent my first months on a nylon stringed acoustic, and eventually got a 1994 40th Anniversary Strat. I got the standard style practice amp, which was soon far too small. Next was an old Roland Cube 60. Being a bit of an equipment nut, I was still looking for more power and better sound. I started looking into tube amps, and found them to be far too expensive.
After a bit of searching on the Internet, I came across a site called The Engineering Musician. It had the schematic for a 60-watt tube amp, and a good deal of explanation behind each section. In mid 1997, when I was 14, I started getting the parts to build the amp. I don’t think The Engineering Musician is online anymore, but the guy who put it together is still around. I still have all the printouts of the contents, but all the files are gone thanks to an ornery Travan tape drive.
The amp is a Class AB with Sovtek 6L6GC’s, and Sovtek 12AX7WA’s for the preamp and phase splitter. The rectifier tube is a Ruby 5AR4 (which was fairly difficult to find at the time, hence the Chinese tube). The power and output transformers, and choke are all Hammonds (276x, 1650N, and 159P respectively). The three main power capacitors are LCR’s, and there were a number of Orange Drops used in the signal section. For the housing, I chose a 4-space rack case with a brushed, anodized front panel. The chassis was made out of aluminum to my specs by a sheetmetal shop.
True to old tube-amp style, all of the wiring is point-to-point, making for quite a mess of wires. The cooling fan is tied to the standby circuit, and keeps the amp fairly cool, even in the SKB 6-space rack case I have it in.
Initial Chassis Layout
Final Chassis Layout
Entire Schematic From The Engineering Musician
I got a number of the parts for the amp from Parts Express. At the time, they sold an empty, angled top, carpeted 4x12 cabinet. I put four Eminence 12” guitar speakers in that cabinet, and painted a sheet of perforated metal for the grille.
The combination of the amp and speaker cabinet was killer. It was waaay louder than anything I needed. The cabinet could handle 300W, and I don’t think I ever turned the amp past maybe 10% power. The sound was super clean, and there was something really sweet about playing through something you made. It’s not quite the same as a guitar, but it’s probably close.