guitar amp kit

[big45]

hello all,
i am new to this forum, and it looks like a great one!
i am thinking about building an amp for my guitar.
what i am looking for is a kit, with all the components, at least a chassis, and electronics,hardware.
   i would like to build a 50 to 100 watt amp. it could be a tube  or
solid state kit.
   i would like a clear high output amp.
   any suggestions or help in building one..would be appreciated.
  i have some background in electronics and schematics, but has been awhile since any project.
   being out of work..i dont have a lot of money to just buy an amp.
besides, i would like to build my own anyway.
   thanks for this site :tu:
play hard and play loud!

[joecool85]

Well, you have a few options, but unfortunetly the only full out kits offered are tube, and expensive.  To get the kind of wattage you want it would be rediculous expensive doing tube, I would go with solid state.  So thats the bad news, no SS kit for you.  The good news is that it is really easy to build a 50w RMS solid state power amp, and relatively easy building a good preamp (its harder deciding what one to build than it is actually building it.)  A simple LM3886 circuit will give you a solid 50w RMS. 

You can buy a kit to do that from brian at chipamp.com normally, right now he is out of boards.  I would shoot him an email if you are interested though because if he gets enough people interested it will get him to order boards sooner.  There is another website to buy kits, http://audiosector.com but I haven't dealt with him.  His kits are LM3875 (very similar to the LM3886).  And he sells stereo and dual mono (essentially the same thing), you would want to order a dual mono (then you'd have enough for two guitar amps) or email him and ask if you can special order a single mono.

The other good news is that you can build a poweramp, then use a small amp's lineout as a preamp, or buy a preamp.  Musicians friend has a mic preamp that would work (tube driven no less) for like...$30 or so.

[big45]

  thanks joe,
  i will check out the options you talked about.
    down the line, i would want to build a nice pre amp also.
  once i built a nice guitar amp out of an old console stereo.  it had lots of power and it was a tube amp. i think my son got rid of it though.  too bad.