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Well, after a good bit of juggling this week between a truck repair gone horribly wrong and this cabinet, I was able to finish this amp. It is a 35 watt Dumble inspired head. The baffle is koa from Volcano, and I used a fretboard blank for the ebony faceplate (this isn't something I would do again---the ebony is extremely fragile after being thinned to .040".

It has some cool features. The first toggle switch is a bright switch that adds life to humbuckers, the middle toggle switches to overdrive, and the third lifts the tone controls out of the circuit which turned out to be my preferred sound. My friend Dave and I plugged in a guitar at church after taking these pics and were able to nail this sound. Unfortunately, I was hoping for something else in the cleans. The cleans are rather mid-focused, and I wanted something warm and full to compliment the Voxy amp I did last year. I was hoping for a blackface Fender sound and amp surprised since the tone circuits are so similar.

It was really difficult to photograph because we didn't think of bringing a tripod. After a few shots, we gave up on style and just tried to get steady ones.

That's a beauty, James.  I haven't seen too many amps with nice woods on them. I think the only one was an Alessandro, Red Bone Special with a maple case and a birdseye maple face plate, that my son bought.  I know there are others out there.  This one, though, is great looking, but also functional with the Tolex box and just the nice Zoot on the face.

Good job.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Holy Smokes! That is sweet!

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Thanks guys. It actually looks so much better than the pics really show,
and I wish I had a camcorder so I could make some video clips. The
sound is SO defined. It's awesome.    

drrrrrrrrrrroooooooooooooooooooooooooollllllllllllllllllllll llllll


OH MY THAT IS AWESOME!

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nay

My blogs
Hand Made Gutar
Woodworker++

Thanks, Nathan.

Chris, it really depends on the amp. Some are pretty slim on the inside,
and others like this have more going on. I'm not sure what this one cost,
but I know I could've done it less expensively. I used some really nice
resistors on this one and upgraded the iron in the transformers. Both of
those were in the name of increasing it's definition.

I didn't know anything when I started. I had a layout, found
turretboards.com and tubesandmore.com (each are newbie friendly), and
ordered what I needed. It was like connecting the dots. I was talking with
John Mayes one night and he mentioned the 18 Watt he was building. I'd
been wanting to get back into guitar and decided to go for it. I actually
know quite a bit now and don't want to build another amp for a while. I
would suggest getting The Guitar Amp Handbook, by David Hunter if
you'd like to start developing an understanding of what's going on inside.
If you go to trinityamps.com, Stephen has some great kits available and
otherwise makes his layouts available for free on the message board.

Very cool James. Looks great!

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Mike

"The Dude abides. I don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh." The Stranger

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

Hi James, cool amp!
A couple of questions: What happens when you hit the overdrive toggle switch, some sort of input gain boost (this is a single channel amp right, so I assume there is no channel switching?) Do you have a foot switch for these controls? What type of speaker(s) and cabinet do you run with it?

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Thanks, Arnt. The toggle switches cut things out of the signal or
introduce them back in. The gain toggle just cuts a gain stage out of the
signal when off. I could've built in channel switching but decided not to.

I actually ordered a few speakers, all 12". One was a Celestion G-1265,
one was a Two-Rock 12-65, and the thirds as a 50 watt Weber Bluedog I
already had. I've since sold them all, actually. Believe it or not, yesterday
we were playing through a 15" JBL eon monitor that was in the church.
I'm actually selling the amp so I didn't keep the speakers. I ran into some
overspending this summer.

That is an amazing Amp!

Dang James - but that sure is nice. Darn it, now I want one!

Though know it ain't gonna happen as I struggled with wiring a switch on my homebrew thickness sander and struggled with wiring in the light bulbs on my first Foxbender.

Thanks, you two! Anthony, I might get confused with those things too,
but I had a roadmap for this. Wiring the tubes takes a little acrobatics,
but I bet you could do it.

Yeah, you can do it if you have a good set of instructions.  I once built a stereo tube amp from a kit.  It was great.  25W per channel, nice preamp stage and all that.  Worked great for years.  Probably still would If the tubes didn't cost like $70 -- 80 each, and weren't so hard to find.  I can't remember exactly, but they were Mil Spec tubes something like 3884's.  James is right about the standing on your head thing while wiring tube sockets.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

Thats beeeyu tee full James! Great job building it.

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Anderson Guitars
Clearwater,Fl. 33755

James...very nice job!

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Brad
Avon, OH

Y'know, despite my love for my 60 watt rivera, it is just a big, ugly hunk of 80's rack gear, and that's just so, so much prettier. I'm seriously going to have to look up those websites and ponder a nice little low-watt (who really needs 60 watts, right) amp.

Very, very nice work!

   

I'm totally happy to lend support to anyone who wants to explore these.

thats sick!!!

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Peter M.
Cornerstone Guitars
http://www.cornerstoneukes.com

[QUOTE=peterm] thats sick!!! [/QUOTE]
I mean that in a good way!

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Peter M.
Cornerstone Guitars
http://www.cornerstoneukes.com

Awesome James, that is truly spectacular!

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I'd like to be able to prove, just for once, that money wouldn't make me happy...

James, I'm sorry you have to sell it off. It is beautiful. I hope you get more than enough to cover your expenses. Now that you've done it, you can always do it again, or not.

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Aoibeann