Building A Poweramp?

Chainsaw Calligraphy

Connoisseur of Sound
Jul 2, 2010
170
0
16
Manchester, UK
I've been looking at the shematics for tube poweramps, and they appear to be pretty simple. Now I don't know alot about electrical engineering, but can any of you guys think of a reason why I couldn't just solder together £300 worth of components on a PCB instead of spending £1000 on a decent rack mount poweramp?
 
The only reason not to do it would be the 10,000 pounds worth of labor it will take to get it done. Got to do it because your hungry to learn not just to save money.

Build a 100w 1959 or 50w 1987 Marshall into whatever chassis you got. Tune it clean. Try it with and without the 2nd tube and tonestack. Try the 1st tube JCM800 style and all its variations. Should be good by then.

Early Fender Twins and Showman would be another good starting point.

You could borrow from mic pre designs if you want to add balanced transformers. But it would be fine unbalanced.
 
There's no reason you can't do it, but here's a few things to bear in mind:

1) Cost of tooling up?
The chassis will cost money, and you'll need to cut and drill, possibly tap screw threads also. If you already have the tools that's fine. Otherwise it pushes the cost up, so include this in your calculations. you may save less money than you expected.

2) Where are you getting the PCB from?
If you plan to make your own PCB add more tooling-up cost; if you plan to buy, be aware that some PCBs on the market have poor noise/hum performance. A poweramp is very simple though, so point-to-point wiring is probably a better way to go anyway.

3) Layout
Making all the connections in the schematic does not guarantee good performance -- good physical layout of the components is needed or you could end up with a humming, noisy, shitty-sounding bastard of an amp. This is true even of solid-state amps, and tube amps are more sensitive to this because the impedances are much higher. OTOH, get it right and it'll probably outperform many commercial amps in this respect. Just be aware this may take more time than you expect.

4) No guarantee.
If you wire it up wrong you'll need to replace blown parts and start again. Burn out your output transformer and your savings shrink pretty drastically. Exploding electrolytic caps aren't funny either. So be careful and make sure it's solidly built, or a lot of time and money could go up in smoke.

5) Do you plan to use it live?
What if the stage manager refuses to let you plug it in because it isn't CE marked? No CE mark means no safety testing and no electromagnetic compatibility testing. The venue's insurance might be void if they allow uncertified equipment to be used, so it'd be a valid objection.

6) Insurance
If your amp gets eaten by buffalo, can you spare the time to build a replacement? If a commercial amp is trashed you can wave your credit card and get a replacement more or less immediately, and if it's insured you won't have to eat nothing but pasta for 6 months as a result. Trying to insure a DIY poweramp? I've never tried, but it could be tricky.

7) Safety
High voltages can cause permanent injury and death. If you built the equipment causing it, you are legally responsible (unless you died). If you bought the equipment and used it as specified you're not.

None of these considerations are deal-breakers, but you should give them a bit of thought before committing yourself.

Best case scenario is you'll have a high-performing amp which will survive a bazooka attack, for low cost.

Worst case is you'll wind up with a shitty-sounding amp that cost more than expected and ate a whole lot of time, and which soon shorts out due to a mechanical shock dislodging a loose screw and burns down your house or something.

One final caution -- you may find yourself sucked into the wonderful world of circuitry, and wind up spending way too much time with a soldering iron in your hand instead of making music. :D
 
If you are going to build a tube power amp, you might as well just build a whole amp, preamp included.

When building a preamp, all you need is a few tubes and a small power transformer. When building a standalone power amp, you need a beefy power transformer(I'm assuming you want a 50/100 watter?), a beefy output transformer, a phase inverter, and a driver tube. And it's all going to have to fit in a big enclosure. So going the DIY route, you might as well build a whole amp. As long as you build it with an FX loop, you can just use the power amp whenever you want and bypass the pre.
And before you jump into a high power tube electronics, you should really start off with some much smaller amps.
 
Thanks for the advice guys, it's given me alot to think about. I don't have any desperate need for a poweramp at the moment, it's just it would be be nice to have something to add some meat my Engl pre other than impulses or the solid state piece of wretch combo that I have at the moment. Maybe a poweramp is a bit ambitious but this has tweaked my interest now so I might start off with something a bit smaller.
 
Maybe a poweramp is a bit ambitious but this has tweaked my interest now so I might start off with something a bit smaller.

Tube Screamers would be a good place to start -- cheap, safe and useful.

Discrete transistor mic preamps are a good second step if you're into recording. Once you know what you're doing with circuits you can piss all over cheap preamps for less money. It's not even funny.
 
Tube Screamers would be a good place to start -- cheap, safe and useful.

Discrete transistor mic preamps are a good second step if you're into recording. Once you know what you're doing with circuits you can piss all over cheap preamps for less money. It's not even funny.

Cool, I'll look into those. The DIY Tube Screamer is looking pretty tempting for a first project. Thanks again for the input guys.
 
Don't get completely turned off on the idea though, grab an amp kit and start building, you'll enjoy it!