"Trevor Wilson" wrote in message
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"Keith G" wrote in message
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"Trevor Wilson" wrote in message
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"max graff" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi guys,

I am planning on building my own valve amp and need a starting
point
viz. books, forums etc. Any tips would be of good help.

**Just listen to a bunch of amps in your price range. Buy or build
the one you like. Just for yuks, see if you can organise a blind
test of the amps. That orta sort out the dodgy ones. For valve amps,
unless you build it PRECISELY the way you hear it (same valves, same
output transformers, etc) you will be wasting your time.


More totally stupid *advice* from Trevor...

**Not at all. We do things a little differently in this part of the
world. We don't marry a woman without tasting the cooking or checking
out the bedroom performance. We don't buy a car without test driving
it first and and we don't buy hi fi equipment without first listening
to it. At least, that's how sane people do it.


Hmm, so all those 'Dumb Sheila' jokes were *true* then?

(What do ugly people do? :-)




For a kick-off, how TF do you suggest he goes about organising the
test - ask 'Valve Amps R Us' if he can play with half their stock for
a few hours then, having picked one (real easy), ask them for a
circuit diagram and a parts list for it...??

**If you can't hear it, don't buy it. Very simple.


What you suggest is barely *doable*, if not outright impossible!
Contrary to what you're obviously used to, valve amps aren't sold on
every street corner in the UK; I can only think of one outfit that would
have a rake of them and that's Walrus. Most of the models they stock
wouldn't be very suitable for 'cloning' and I suspect they'd tell you to
take a hike if you asked to prat about doing blind tests on their
premises - and, before you ask, the likelihood of them them letting take
a bunch of them home for testing (and return) is not high, I suspect...

Then, if by some chance you did manage to hear a suitable candidate for
cloning, it would *not* sound like a 'carbon copy' of it unless the
identical componernts (and, I suspect, wiring layout) was used
throughout and, even if it was, it would sound nothing like the pattern
amp if it was of any vintage. You know that yourself - see your own
comments about transformer differences in your reply to Iain.

What the OP needs to do is listen to those who are experienced with real
*buildable* circuits and follow the advice he likes the sound of best -
he's got to start somewhere and damn near every 'normal' PP amp on the
planet owes summat to the early Mullard designs (AFAIK) so why struggle
against it??

(Different with SETs of course, but I'd recommend a SET as a start amp
for a number of reasons!)