Well, I'm now in the troubleshooting stage of my Weber 6M40 (Super Reverb circuit in a bluesbreaker-style box) kit, and I thought I'd share some of the mistakes I've made, just to show that you shouldn't undertake a difficult amp, like a BF Fender as your first build.
While I'm not new to this, the chassis on this amp is very cramped, and it's easy to not see missed connections. This amp will also be very difficult to replace the filter caps in 2017. I'm already dreading it.
Pix will follow when I actually have the amp running.
So far, prior to putting in the tubes in, I found that I wasn't getting any bias voltage. This could have burned up a pair of output tubes, had I actually put them in. Turns out, I smoked the bias diode, because I was too lazy to heatsink it. Replacing this was a pain, as you'll see in the pix.
I put the tubes in last night, and tried to bias them. No cathode current, and the bias wasn't adjustable. I figured out that I missed the resistor between the bias pot and ground, so the voltage divider didn't work.
While I was trying to bias the tubes, I also noticed that the reverb driver tube was getting brighter than the others. Immediately, I realized that the tube was going to burn up, so I shut it down. Turns out, I missed the jumper between the grids on the tube, and as a result one of the grids wasn't referenced to ground.
I re-fired up the amp, and discovered the tubes still wouldn't bias. What was the matter? I missed connecting the screens to the power supply. I'll be fixing that tonight.
What's the point of this? I mean, other than I did a sloppy build?
It's that I made, diagnosed, and fixed all of these mistakes without even getting a single sound out of the amplifier. I can't even imagine trying to do an amp this complex without experience.
Building an amp isn't like fixing an amp. When you fix an amp, you at least know it worked at one point.