ampmaker

“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 […]

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

A mixture of old and new styles for Colin’s SE-5a build: vintage piping and red tolex with aluminium ‘treadplate’ material for the front panel. Together with the matching 4×8 cabinet, it looks terrific. “The finished item is a vast improvement on my Vox Valvetronix 30W amp – easier to get where you want and the

If you built your amp in the cramped confines of a shed, or perhaps on the kitchen table, spare a thought for Stephen – he built his on board a ship in the North Sea! I can’t imagine what sort of mains voltages a ship’s generator puts out, nor how you solder while being thrown

Here’s a conversion of an old solid-state amp: the Marshall Lead 12 combo at the top of Brian’s 3-way stack now contains a complete SE-5a. Brian used the SE-5a Basic kit and placed the output transformer within the Lead 12’s chassis (which was deep enough to accomodate it). The valves and power transformer hang down

Once again, it’s the neatly executed logo that finishes this amp off. Chris had his logo engraved with his name in a script-style by a local specialist engraver in Newbury. This type of logo uses a black-on-white sandwich of plastic and the engraver removes the top layer to make the logo design (just like the

Here’s another builder using car model lettering to create a logo. In this case, Chris found the ‘CKS’ letters at a car badge shop on Ebay, and – by accident or design – the colours perfectly match the red tolex of the cab covering. “I attached the steel front panel with high strength cabinet magnets

Using a donor combo cab is definitely a fast track to getting a completed amp. John opted for the basic version of the SE-5a amp kit to use in his old Blues Jr. “The sound quality is superb, currently through the Blues Jr’s 12-inch Eminence speaker. I have plans to install a Celestion Alnico Blues,

Like many amateur cabinet makers, Robert found that getting the right wood is difficult. “I got some pine board from B&Q but it was a bit curved, so I ended up with laminated spruce furniture board from Homebase.” Despite this Robert persevered and taught himself how to use a dovetail jig and router. “One weekend

It’s amazing how a few cosmetic choices can give an amp a different character. Andy had a Tweed-covered speaker cabinet and decided to do a matching SE-5a head. So his front panel is cream-on-brown with cream chickenhead knobs instead of the SE-5a’s standard black and gold livery. It’s really effective – one of my own

Jens runs a left-handed guitar shop in Germany (www.lefthandgear.de), and bought an SE-5a kit with classic combo cabinet to use as a demonstrator amp for customers. “This was ‘background’ before building another amp completely myself”. Good to see another Tokai Love Rock fan – this one being rather unusual: left-handed and P90 pickups.

Here’s another solid-state amp that’s had its unloved innards removed and an SE-5a circuit added. Joel’s donor was a Rickenbacker TR7. As the second photo shows there’s plenty of room, and it only took some drilling to add the holes for mounting the individual components. “I tried it with several guitars (Rickenbacker, Charvel, Fender, Hofner),

Cool story: this SE-5a amp kit was bought as a Christmas gift for Hywel by his father. Once Hywel had built the amp, his grandfather then helped to make and finish the cabinet. The cab uses an Amp Maker headshell and Hywel opted for a front-side ventilation slot to show off the valves.