Official Luthiers Forum!

You can get all of the Lightning plans from trinityamps.com via the
discussion board. They're sticked to the top of the Lightning forum.    

[quote=John Mayes]18 watt Lite like the one I did last time. Here are pics of it [/quote]

   That red amp rocks! I heard some mp3's of that configuration and was very impressed for a small amp!

   Almost stack-like! Lugging it isn't though! I'm gonna build one of those one day!

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Billy Dean Thomas
Covina, CA

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

James, one very nice vintage looking amp, Just one question, where is the dial that goes up to 11?

Colin

_________________
I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

[QUOTE=gburghardt]   Would one also need a tutorial in constructing this besides very basic soldering skills?
[/QUOTE]
I did a lot of reading and research on amp building some time ago, and here's the problem: Building the amp is relatively easy, but avoiding and troubleshooting problems requires a lot of electronics knowledge and experience. Perhaps I was dissuaded too easily, though, so good luck if you plunge ahead!

[QUOTE=John Mayes] 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.

[QUOTE]

This is true - a few really good electronics books to start with are "teach yourself electricity and electronics" and there are amp specific ampbuilding books at London Power {Kevin O'Conner}
http://www.londonpower.com/books.htm
Also the best site on the web for ampbuilding is hands down 18watt.com, which has many vintage Marshall fans, but also has people that can help with any query about any amp problem.
I studied ampbuilding before I changed me mind and decided to focus on luthiery, sorry all my pics are on disk.
Cheers
charliewood

If I were to do it again, my preference would be to not do the chassis and turret board myself I bought a blank chasis from tubesandmore.com thinking I'd save $20. Well, when you don't have tools to work the thing... I ended up spending so much more time than I needed to to lay the chasis out and cut the holes.

If you want a better sounding Vox, go by the trinityamps.com layout and guide for the Lightning, and go with their transformers since they're OEM, just pay $40 for the chasis someone is offering in the swap meet forum. I would also buy the premade turret board from the other link I mentioned. It's just a few dollars more than the supplies alone. I believe these two moves will save a day or two of work if you work by hand tools like I do.

It's completely a preference thing.

[QUOTE=Alain Desforges] Wow James! That is too cool, man!

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


[/QUOTE]

Ditto