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Thread: HomeBrews

  1. #1
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    HomeBrews

    GOT HOMEBREW?
    I've had two techs build me two different homebrew amps.
    The one pictured is a Bogen CHB35 100 WATT PA amplifier designed around a proven Circuit.
    It sounds very very good dirty. The cleans arent great.
    It almost gets a early Led Zepplin sound through the right speakers. I'm very very pleased with this amp my buddy built.
    QUOTE-(from a guitar forum )"There is an excellent article on Geofex about converting PA amps to guitar use. It involves cascading the gain stages to get a fair amount of preamp gain, rewiring the tone stack to values suitable for a guitar and changing input/outputs for guitar use. If you do all that, and the amp you choose has tubes with decent tone you can make yourself a nice all-tube for almost no money"_END QUOTE. That's why there's so many of them selling on ebay these days, there's becoming a market for guitarists wanting to do this.Apparentyl Terry Kath , the legendary Chicago guiatist wasa proponont of Bogens.
    Anyone else built or had any homebrew amp experience?
    I will also post a pic to the Bogen ampbuilders page ICAOII>.
    [IMG] [/IMG] FROM A Vintage Tube Amp tech- QUOTE-This involves converting old tube hifi and P.A. amplifiers

    for use as guitar amplifiers. In general, I will need to bring the amplifier back up to factory spec first. Then, when the amplifier is again working correctly, I will modify the input stage to work correctly with a guitar and will also,upon request add additional gain stages as well as a master volume to give the user the same flexibility as found in any purpose made master volume guitar amplifier. I can go as far as you want. I can essentially gut the chassis and build a whole new amp or just modify the input stage so it works correctly with a guitar as the source. Many times these old P.A. amps can be had for under $100.00. They can be totally refurbished for about the same cost as a hi-fi amp rebuild, and then you can use them with the gain and drive they have or have an extra gain stage added to get searing overdrive at the twist of a knob. I have had great success doing this and it offers the musician on a budget, who may already have an old tube P.A. amp just collecting dust a way of getting in to t he classic sound of tubes without the huge price tag normally associated with modern production 'boutique' amps. Most of these old P.A. amps were designed to run all day long and were built tough. I can also modify the phono preamps of old mono hifi amps so that they will sound good with a guitar. Although not as tough as a vintage P.A. amp, these old hi-fi amps sound real nice. I design my own gain stages and because I am so familiar with the way tube amps work, I can easily modify existing tone control and high gain stages to work real good in a guitar amplification application. So, if you are tired of seeing that black face Fender or vintage Marshall go for about three times what you can afford on Ebay, you might want to consider buying something like an old tube Bogen P.A. amp and having me rebuild the amp and modify it for guitar use for you._END QUOTE
    http://www.schematicheaven.com/hifi.htm
    http://www.uglyamps.com/bogen.htm

  2. #2
    Forum Member cdw2000's Avatar
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    Re: HomeBrews

    Hi,
    I just built a homebrew over the last couple months. It started out as an old 1950's Capehart radio pulled from an old console. In the end the only thing I used out of that was the power transformer.

    I was looking for a low wattage amp, so mine is a 4-1/2 watt single ended 6V6 design. I lifted the best (IMO) circuits from several Fender amp designs (and some other designs) and combined them. So mine has a Tweed Champ style voicing but with a full tone stack and tube buffered effects loop plus a gain control and master volume control.

    Here's a link to the thread I had started to brag about... I mean to share ... my design:

    http://www.thefenderforum.com/forum/...ad.php?t=35413
    "Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so" -- Douglas Adams
    "If something has a 1 in a million chance of occurring, 9 times out of 10 it will happen" -- Terry Pratchett

  3. #3
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    Re: HomeBrews

    wow. Your thread wwas excellent. Thanks for the link. I think its a bit easier for an amateur tech to go out and find an Old Bogen PA amp and follow some design modifications thata ahve been tried and confirmed than to do a complete rebuild of an amp .Wasnt much to ID that as the original radio amplifier except the Power X-Former. Thats quite a lil masterpiece you made.

  4. #4
    Forum Member cdw2000's Avatar
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    Re: HomeBrews

    Thanks, Jerryjg.

    My amp was a fun project and I learned alot. I have been building/modding effects pedals for 25+ years as a hobby. I am an EE, but do audio design projects only as a hobby. This was the first time I delved into tube design and found lots of resources on the web.
    "Time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so" -- Douglas Adams
    "If something has a 1 in a million chance of occurring, 9 times out of 10 it will happen" -- Terry Pratchett

  5. #5
    Forum Member NTBluesGuitar's Avatar
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    Re: HomeBrews

    Well, not sure if it's 100% homebrew, but I stuffed a 5E5A Tweed Pro into a Hot Rod Deluxe. The faceplate is my design:





    These have been floating around here a lot lately. Rob, where's yours, now?
    "...pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field;
    that, of course, they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little,
    shriveled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome, insects of the hour."

    -Edmund Burke

  6. #6
    Forum Member Kap'n's Avatar
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    Re: HomeBrews

    Back when I started getting into this, rustling old PA amps was really the only way to get going, unless you wanted to gut an existing amplifier. There wasn't an amp building industry like there is now.

    Bogen made some decent Public Address stuff back in the day, mostly for installations - distributed paging systems and the like. You won't confuse it with Hi-Fi, but solid for most guitar applications.
    Several guitars in different colors
    Things to make them fuzzy
    Things to make them louder
    orange picks

  7. #7
    Forum Member yankeerob's Avatar
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    Re: HomeBrews

    Quote Originally Posted by jerryjg View Post
    Apparentyl Terry Kath , the legendary Chicago guiatist wasa proponont of Bogens.
    Erm - I think the level of his involvement with Bogen was sticking a small Bogen P.A. amp in front of a Showman on 'Freeform Guitar' somehow - the result was - shall we say - less than gratifying...

    I don't see anything wrong - however - with building an amp out of whatever you can salvage - there is a lot of Partridge iron floating about the countryside (over here anyway) in old Sound City and Simms-Watts amps that for all other intents and purposes have become little more than door stops...

  8. #8
    Forum Member yankeerob's Avatar
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    Re: HomeBrews

    Quote Originally Posted by NTBluesGuitar View Post
    Rob, where's yours, now?
    Well - being we've only used the HR iron - I'd say they deserve 'homebrew' status - and to answer your question - awaiting 'er next gig... it's still in the original livery - unfortunately - but the original idea was to build a solid gigging rig - and it is just that - way solid! I've never covered an amp but have a contact for someone who is very good at it so I may just hand that part over to him...

  9. #9
    Forum Member wingnut1's Avatar
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    Re: HomeBrews

    I've seen a lot of posts on 18watt.com and some other sites where people use the guts out of Hammond organs to build homebrews. I've got one siting in my garage just waiting for me to get around to it.

  10. #10
    Forum Member Guitar_Mc's Avatar
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    Re: HomeBrews

    I made one out of an old AA5 radio.
    Its got a little 6" speaker in it, but I wired it with a 1/4" jack for the speaker connection so I can unplug the speaker and plug it into my 212 cabinet.

    50L6 Pwr, 35Z5 Rect, & a pair of 12SQ7's for preamp tubes.
    I put in a an isolation transformer and fuse.


    I also built one using 2 radioshack 12.6V filament transformers.
    I just hooked them up back to back.

    This gives you 12.6V between the two power transformers for heaters. I used a 12L6 for the power tube. I used diodes for a rectifier and put in a wirewound "choke" to get the voltages right at the filter caps.

    I also wired the speaker output to a 1/4" jack on this one so I can drive my 212 cab.

    Now that is a fun little amp.
    Music will always find its way to us, with or without business, politics, religion, or any other bull$hit attached. - E.C.

  11. #11
    Forum Member yankeerob's Avatar
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    Re: HomeBrews

    Here's a little project that works pretty good...



    It's not built from salvage as I had the transformers wound for it but it's a screamin' little 1W demon that'll drive a coupla guitar loudspeakers no probs... input, vol, tone, power and standby are on the side you can't see - it's a combo version but I've done the boards so you could make a head version of it too - it's based on the Guido Landry uTube but we've modded the tone stack and uprated the PS and transformers - with straight off the shelf tubes (2 JJ ECC83S's and a EH 6SN7) it's got a pretty good tone and is surprisingly addictive to mess around with!!

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