software

I was thinking of building an amp for myself, planning on a fairly simple ciruit like a tweed champ style.
Is it particularly difficult?, one vol, one tone and a couple of tubes shouldn't be too hard right?
Does anyone know of any places (would prefer UK) that sell kits of some type for this sorta thing?
Thanks.

They aren't UK, so shipping would be a bit higher, but Torres Engineering has some tweed champ style kits, as well as others.

I just checked it out and they have a UK division too, although I had heard mixed reviews about them.

Torres has left me with a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Their customer service has screwed up more things than they've done correctly with me personally.

Bruce at Mission Amps (Lew's brother) sells the best Tweed Deluxe kit on the market. Best trannies and parts IMHO. Not much more going on there than with the Tweed Champ circuit wise, but more tone again IMHO.

If you are partial to the Marshall sound, there are a lot of guys making 18 watt kits. They are a bit more complicated though.

My theory is that if you are competent enough to solder up a champ, going the next step isn't too much more difficult.

Here's the deal. Make sure it is an amp whose tone is something you really want. Dont' just build a kit becasue it is easy.

I'm sure that Bruce would ship to the UK.

If you are looking to save as much money as possible and dont' mind some cheaper parts. Weber Speakers offers a lot of budget priced kits that utilize cheap (but not necessarily bad sounding) Chinese transformers. But he includes speaker/cab/parts in one single kit. Very little support.

You can get great support on the Weber and 5E3 forums.

If you buy from Bruce, you get what I think is the best support of all. Don't expect a lot of typewritten words on what to do. It's mostly picture based. (as in a picture tells a thousand words). You just look at the layout sheet and then look at the parts, then look at the example pics and wire it up.

Then you pray as you plug it in the first time.


Originally Posted by rinse_masterI just checked it out and they have a UK division too, although I had heard mixed reviews about them.

This is the UK Torres site: from : localhost/freespace.virgin.net/vyse.co/index.htm

I wanted to try something like a Champ because as a first project it shouldn't be too hard, and because it'd make a killer practice amp paired with my Spina DS-1

Thanks for the ideas everyone.

what does a tweed champ sound like?


Originally Posted by shredaholicwhat does a tweed champ sound like?

ragged little, low power, quick to distort, small speaker box of goodness....

me and my friend are thinking about doing it as a project for his first tube amp after ive finished building my plexi - from : localhost/into stuff like dire straits, the who, the shadows etc, do you think he'll like the sound of it? he's currently playing a marshall MG15DFX lol

edit: i forgot to mention his main guitar is a AM series strat