ampmaker

“Finished wiring at the weekend but didn’t get time to do testing till today. All testing went smoothly and the amp is sounding very good. The clean just so beautiful and the gain is very tasty at low volume (I’ll get a chance to turn it up tomorrow night). All the controls are very beautifully […]

This is my favourite cabinet style of all. The so-called Mk1 Bluesbreaker may be chunkier than the classic Bluesbreaker type, but it just looks right. “Speaker is a 12” Celestion Vintage 30 and I am very happy with the tone – and the volume, by the way. If anyone out there thinks 5W might be

“Here’s the pix. SE-5a White Lightning, pretty cool. Everything matches my existing Hotrod White Lightning stack. I got the white tolex and Fender hardware from the nice folks at The Vintage Sound. The lightning bolt badge from some guy on eBay.”

“Finally completed my Se-5a build and just wanted to let you know it’s working and sounds fantastic! I’m extremely happy with it – to say it’s an improvement on the horrible 5W Blackheart Little Giant amp it replaced is an understatement. That was shrill, brittle sounding – pretty horrible and a massive disappointment (I only

“I am absolutely delighted with the finished article and the sound of the amp. Much better than I’d expected and much better sounding than the website clips as I can only play those through my computer speakers! I attach a photo of the finished amp which you may use as you see fit. I am

“Here are some pictures of my SE-5a head and speaker cab. Had great fun making it, with your email support. The SE-5a sounds great, very responsive when played hard! Good clean tones. Very loud. Fantastic. “The logo was all hand cut, filed, sanded and spayed by me. Just like the amp was hand-wired and the

“Finally finished my amp tonight. It wasn’t the chassis, but all the fiddly bits on the cabinet. Have attached some pics for you. (‘m not a brilliant photographer either!!). Never mind I’ve really enjoyed making it and learnt a hell of a lot so going to enjoy playing it now. Always been a Strat man

Here’s a great job on the classic combo cabinet, with a nice colour combination and the extra added touch of a colour-matched handle.  “I got the handle from Sid Chaplin (Vintage Radio Grilles).” Inside, there’s an interesting issue that needed some work: Terry wanted the faceplate text to be right-way-up when viewed from the front.

“After about a week’s work spread over five months, I have finally completed my amp build. The cabinet is made from MDF, 42x52x25cm (HWD). The 12” speaker is a Fane reclaimed from a 1970s Hiwatt amp, purchased for £15 on eBay. The finish is Crown Gloss Paint (Country Beige) applied with a roller. With the

I’m envious of anyone with woodworking skills, especially when they combine it with such gorgeous choice of wood. “It is a hard rock maple (head and cabinet). I was very pleased with how the figuring turned out once I applied the aniline dye and clear coats. “It sounds great! I am so happy with the

Old Marshall solid-state amps of the ’70s and ’80s are a great find for amp converters – they usually have good quality British-made Celestion speakers and they’re made as sturdily as the Marshall’s valve amps of the same era. Stefan fitted a SE-5a Basic Kit into this combo. “It’s really loud. I thought it would

Dave’s half-stack has a lot of nice touches. The vent grille – from a car accessory shop – is angled backwards, and the piping slots go around the cabinet instead of running back-to-front. “The SE-5a was finished last week, and the build went extremely well as a first project. The sound and quality are exactly

The best thing about cheap solid-state amps is that they make great donors for valve circuits. Mauro built his SE-5a Basic Kit into a Behringer Vintage GM110 combo. As with any donor amp build, Mauro started by checking whether the 257x67mm SE-5a turret board and transformers could fit, and that there was space for the

Whenever an Amp Maker kit is built upside-down – as here, where it hangs from the top of the combo cabinet – it requires some thought and planning. It’s best to use the Plain chassis version of the kit and order a mirror-image turret board, because when flipping the control panel by 180-degrees, the inside

There’s always some new twist on combo styling, and Rob’s is one. Wanting a control panel that was easier to read when standing over the amp, Rob designed a combo which would take the SE-5a chassis at an angle. He worked out the weird geometry to allow the valves and power transformer adequate clearance, and

Combos don’t get much cuter than this. Peter’s hand-made 1×12 cab has an offset G12H speaker and a two-tone colour scheme.

Rab wanted to make a combo cab where the controls were at the front – i.e. with the chassis suspended from the top of the combo cabinet. This simple decision actually causes a lot of changes: the whole amp needs to be laid out in ‘mirror-image’ form (compared to the layout shown in the online

Another approach to combo styling; John went for the chunkier late-’70s styling and used Marshall-style large chequerboard grille cloth to set it off. It creates a very purposeful-looking amp.

Another vote for natural pine with danish oil finishing, from Tim and his SE-5a. Tim used a simple L-pad attenuator to reduce speaker volume (while the amp itself is cranked). He mounted the L-pad control on a small panel just inside the back of the combo cabinet.

“Over the holidays I had a little time to finish my amp. Now everything is done and I have a little screamer! The amp is really noise-free. The sound is just great. I usually play a Fender Twin, and I used occasionally a Boss DS-1 distortion pedal, but I was never really happy with the