# My First Amp Build



## Dasher (Feb 3, 2011)

Hello Everyone!

I just thought I'd share some pictures of my first amp build. I decided to go the not-so-adventurous route for my first time and used a kit that I bought from Ampmaker (WF-55 4W Tweed style amp). Barry, the man behind Ampmaker, was great to deal with and helped me out tons during the final debugging phase of the project. So without further ado, here's a picture of the completed mini-stack!

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Amp Head

I built the cabinet for the amp head from scratch and with minimal tools (I only have a drill!). Home Depot was nice enough to do all the cuts for me. Covering the cabinet with tolex proved to be the most frustrating and unpleasant experience of the whole build but I'm glad I did it myself.

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Speaker Cabinet

I modified an old combo amp that I had into a 1X12 speaker cabinet. I think it turned out pretty good!

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Overall this was a really fun and awesome learning experience. The amp sounds great and I love the simplicity of just having a volume control. 

Thanks for reading!

Scott


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## greco (Jul 15, 2007)

CONGRATs !! 

Neat,clean and simple......and it gets the job done.

Even if the tolexing was the "most frustrating" part of the build, you can be proud that you did such a great job on both the head and cab.

Many thanks for posting this.

Cheers

Dave


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## GuitarsCanada (Dec 30, 2005)

Nice project and very well done. It looks pretty cool actually.


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## Dasher (Feb 3, 2011)

Thanks for the kind words!


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## Skiddlydiddly (Sep 14, 2010)

Nice work! It looks great!


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## Furtz (Nov 27, 2010)

That's a pretty cool looking amp. Unusual layout.
Is it based on a Champ?


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## Dasher (Feb 3, 2011)

Furtz said:


> Is it based on a Champ?


Hey Furtz,

It sure is.


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## dcole (Oct 8, 2008)

Sweet man. I have thought of picking stuff up from that site. Was shipping bad? Was there any surprise costs at the border?


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## Dasher (Feb 3, 2011)

Hi dcole,

Thanks for the comment!



dcole said:


> Was shipping bad?


Shipping was quite expensive and came out to about $70 CND for the kit I ordered. However, it only took about 5 days for me to recieve the order so that was nice!



dcole said:


> Was there any surprise costs at the border?


Yes there were! $44 CND to be exact. This being the first online product I have ever had imported into Canada, I was pretty surprised to learn about brokerage costs. It also didn't help that the UK courier service used works with UPS when they come to North America. I'm sure many of you know that UPS has some of the highest brokerage rates around. I informed Barry of this and said he would consider different shipment methods to Canada in the future. Apparently he was unaware of UPS's high brokerage fees. You'd have to ask him what your shipping options are for the specific product you want to order.

Hope this helps!

Scott


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## dcole (Oct 8, 2008)

Thanks Scott, that did help lots. They have a little transformer that would look good for a push pull ecc99 based amp.


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## Parker (Mar 3, 2011)

Hey Dasher.... I joined this site after reading your thread post about your build.How did you like that company to deal with? I looked into them and really want to build the 18 watt marshall SL-18 18W SuperLite TMB amp

Was their response to questions and help ok? 

Antway thanks for the post it was exactly what i was looking for...and your amp looks great! nice job on the soldering and wiring as well.

Parker


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## Dasher (Feb 3, 2011)

Hey Parker,

Thanks for the comments. The company was excellent to deal with. As far as I know, it's a one man show owned and operated by Barry. He always answered my questions (very thoroughly I should add) within 24 hours. I had some difficulty getting the amp up and running but he helped me through every step of the troubleshooting process until I got it going. Overall, I'm a very satisfied customer!

Scott


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