Where to begin?

[JohnSweden]

I'm a newbee of course and I just need to be pointed in the right direction on amp building. Where do I start?

[armstrom]

Welcome! I'm pretty new here myself but thought I would try to answer your question. Things move kind of slow on this board compared to many others I'm on (not a huge amount of activity) but the quality of the information is generally very high. There's a great group of regulars that have answers to nearly any question you could have about SS amps (and amps in general!). You just have to be patient for replies to arrive

As for where to begin... while I'm mostly a beginner myself (only a couple of builds under my belt) I would suggest investing a lot of time researching preamps. There are some great threads in the preamp section that can provide hours of reading. While the power amp section is important in SS amps it is pretty widely accepted that the preamp is most responsible for the type of tone you get out of your amp. The SS power amps are generally designed to be very "transparent" and do not color the sound too much. So, research preamps... Listen to clips when you can find them and try to decide what you want your amp to sound like. I wouldn't try to reinvent the wheel your first time out so just choose a nice simple preamp circuit to build. On good route to take is to choose a DIY effects pedal that you like ( www.runoffgroove.com has a number of them) and build it. Once you have built and debugged the pedal to your satisfaction then you can typically use it to drive your power amp. While a bit more expensive, a good option is to buy a pedal kit from somewhere like www.olcircuits.com or www.generalguitargadgets.com They will include everything you need and give you the best chance of success.

For the power amp I would suggest going with one of the "chip amp" designs. While there's a lot to be said for sitting down and designing a discrete power amp from scratch the reality is that an IC based chip amp will have fewer components and be easier to build and debug. As with any hobby, people stick with it longer and have more fun if they have good initial success.. If your first build fails and is riddled with problems then you're not as likely to continue

So, if you assume you're going with a chip amp kit then the choice of power amp will come down to how much volume you need/want. The LM3886 kits sold by Brian at chipamp.com are very well regarded and can be VERY loud (40-68W depending on how you build it and what impedance your speaker is). Brian also sells a LM1875 chip amp that is lower power but still should be loud enough to gig with. I've only built the LM3886 kit but it was a very straight-forward build with great directions.

If you want something low power and easy to build I would suggest TDA2005 based kit found here: http://store.qkits.com/moreinfo.cfm/FK607 As far as amp kits go it's as cheap as they come ($10 for the lot!) and it has the advantage of not requiring a fancy power supply. You can simply power it with a 12V 2A DC power supply found anywhere. This will avoid you having to deal with mains voltages your first time out which can be intimidating if you're not used to working with that kind of voltage. You may be able to find a supplier for futurekit projects somewhere in the EU to save on shipping costs. http://www.futurekit.com/distributor.php

After you've built and testing your preamp and power amp combination you need to start thinking about an enclosure. This is where things get interesting (for me, at least) you can do a head only (probably the easiest) or a combo amp... Many people buy cheap/old amps (working or not) and gut them to avoid having to do lots of woodwork. That's all up to you.

Hopefully this will give you somewhere to start... also I'm hoping someone else will reply as well to give you another point of view.

[JohnSweden]

WOW Thanks man that was way more than i ever thought i would get in a reply. I think im gonna try one of those pedaly kits first, do a few of those then maybe try the cricket amp. Thanks again.