Official Luthiers Forum!

If you remember, John Mayes inspired me to look into building an amp. I
built a Matchless Lightning replica with NOS resisters and OEM
transformers to power it up. I made the finger jointed cabinet out of 3/4"
birch gapless ply and covered it myself. Never in my wildest dreams did I
expect covering the cabinet to be the most challenging part of this.   The
speaker is a 12" Weber Blue Dog. I played a real Lightning a week prior to
finishing mine and remember thinking how much better I like mine. It
has a little more shimmer, and I added the hi-cut they put on the DC30.

I remember the paisely being quite the funny idea when I mentioned it
But with this lens this week, I decided to take some pictures of it in my
church sanctuary, where it lives on Sunday nights.

Sorry - they're a little blurry. I was hand-holding, and even at iso1600
the shutter was still a bit slow.

THAT!!! is cool!!!

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

[QUOTE=Brock Poling]
THAT!!! is cool!!!
[/QUOTE]

Me thinks so too!

Hey James, would you be so kind as to record yourself playing a few riffs through it so we can hear how it sounds? Thanks Bro...!

Don Williams39050.8876736111

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Fantastic work!! LOVE IT!!!!!

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

Jame, I've followed this all the way....jokes and all. It really did turn out fantastic.

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Don Atwood
Arlington, VA

Okay...that is the coolest thing I've ever seen...I've toyed with the idea of building an amp myself, especially with what some of the vintage tube boys are selling for, and not even to mention the newer high end stuff like Bad Cat and Bogner! How bout some CSI-type pix of the guts?

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http://www.presnallguitars.com

very cool james. the details are great.
i'd love to see a few construction pics. don't think i've seen any of this progress during my 4 months on the OLF.
also wondering what your total cost was. how much did you save (not including time of course) over buying something comparable?
phil

Very nice James, What are you plugging into that bad boy?
I have built a half dozen or so tube amps too including the sterio I listen to in my shop.

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Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

very cool James!

Oh and John you'd dig what a customer gave me a few months ago. It is an
old Telefunken Opus radio....really awesome condition

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John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com

Nice amp! James, you are one talented dude!

Woah, what a response! I wasn't expecting this. Thanks! That's
really amazingly flattering.

Phil, I have some pics here: http://www.languagepool.net/amp/

You'll notice that I rewired it a few times trying to get it right. You
haven't heard about it because I finished it in August. I don't know why I
never took a picture. I haven't added it up, but I believe it probably cost
in the $650 range realistically, with about $200 in questionable decisions,
like getting the wrong tolex the first time, thus doubling expensive
shipping fees. Etc.

Don, I'd love to record it. I'd rather not have a computer mic recording,
so when I get an interface or find one to borrow, I'll hook some mics in
and record with my friend Dave. I've never found the recordings people
put on the internet very helpful for me. They usually seem abnormally
dry and musically random. I'd rather have a recording with some context,
you know? The pictures show that I have the speaker out, but just to
make it lighter. For screws and it's back in. You can also see the two
holes in the grill cloth from my first batch of screws that were too long.       

And Don, I don't think I've ever had a project followed here. Thanks!

John, I play a tele into it. It has a Van Zandt pickup in the bridge and a
Fralin in the neck. The dream guitar for me would be a 335. The thicker
sound for blues and if I ever play jazz again (probably won't), shorter
scale, and great sound for the texture type playing I do on electric.      

John, I didn't even know people without degrees in electronics could do
this until we were talking on the phone and you mentioned it. That
actually planted the seeds in me to get back into this stuff.

I'll stress that it sounds really good. It's nothing to do with me - I
just connected the dots available at trinityamps.com. You can also read
their forum to see the problems I had and how they were solved.

Thanks again! They're pretty easy to do but not cover.

Wow James! That is too cool, man!

Hmmmm... now you've got me thinking about building an amp... Blast!

Is that Ziricote?

Keep up the great work!

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

Very Nice! Looks Vintage already!

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Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

"Multi famam, conscientiam, pauci verentur."
(Many fear their reputation, few their conscience)

Yep,It is a very cool amp James! I really like it a lot!
Great job building it

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Anderson Guitars
Clearwater,Fl. 33755

James,

Excellent choice in amps, and mighty fine execution! It looks great, and the wood dashboard is a nice lutherie touch.

BTW, how come it's wearing boxer shorts?

Looks great!Cant wait to hear it.

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John S.

It looks great! My main amp is a Matchless DC 30, and I usually play a tele or a 335; looks like we are into the same sounds!

A while back a friend in the US sent me my little ol' Gibson Discoverer amp that I had when I was in High school in the US more than 20 years ago. It was all in parts, no cabinet (don't ask, I was young and foolish ), so I'm going to build a cabinet and put it back together. Thanks for some cool cabinet ideas!

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Rian Gitar og Mandolin

Thank YOU all for being so affirming.

This wasn't too difficult of a project. If you buy the chassis pre-cut, you
can do this in an afternoon minus the cab. I got all my parts from
turretboards.com and tubesandmore.com.

James, here are a couple of my amp projects. A deluxe for the guitar and a stereo for my shop.

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Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

after reading this thread I want to build another! So I ordered a bunch of
capacitors, resistors, turrets, board material, and wire. Gonna make
another
18 watt Lite like the one I did last time. Here are pics of it (and one
without
the back on to show the "CSI guts" It's a EL84 amp with 12Ax7/ECC83
pre's
and a 6ac4/EZ81 rectifier. I already have a couple NOS Telefunken
smooth
plate ECC83's, and a Amperex Bugleboy EZ81 rectifier. I just a couple
Telefunken EL84's and I'm all ready to build the chassis. this one (and I
loved the tone!!) has two 12's. Both Ceramic webers, one blue dog and
one silver bell....awesome speakers that compliment each other so nice...





John Mayes39051.9299305556

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John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com

nevermind....John Mayes39051.9421412037

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John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com

So let us hypothetically presume that someone actually wants to build an amp just like that. Where would one find such plans?
I see you got your parts from: turretboards.com and tubesandmore.com.

Also, I have *some* experience with soldering (built a few electric instruments)--is that enough? Would one also need a tutorial in constructing this besides very basic soldering skills?

I am, I mean hypothetically someone is, very interested in this and would love to learn more.

well just as a word of caution.....

tube voltages can KILL. Literally. I would suggest that one have some
sort of experience with electronics, or at nothing else practice up and be
VERY VERY careful.

That said...

I built mine off this schematic:

http://www.silvatone.bravepages.com/18%20Watt%20Lite%20II/Pd f/18%
20Watt%20Lite%20II%20Schematic.pdf

You can get almost all the actual components you need from mouser.com
or digikey.com or the ones listed before. Also komboking.com is a good
place to get a chassis, un-drilled (part of the fun!).www.tedweber.com for
the best speakers. Also www.mojomusicalsupply.com has lots and lots of
stuff.John Mayes39052.0271180556

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John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com