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SurfGuitar101 Forums » Gear »

Permalink cosmonaut's DIY thread

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Hi All, I recently dove headfirst into amplifier building. I want to collect all the things I'm making into one thread for anyone interested. Many of the builders on this site have inspired me as you all do such amazing work. I am not interested in being period correct, so many builders do that way too well. I'll make a new post for each project and link them here. Now including guitar or two!

6g9 Tremolux lite- normal channel deleted. designed to fit in a princeton chassis.
AA1164 Princeton Reverb - PR+mods for a San Diego musician.
6g15 Reverb Unit - Complete.
6g2 Princeton - nearly complete! needs a faceplate and tube chart.
6g4 Super - going for a voxy Normal channel, and stock vibrato channel.
5f1 Champ - "Betty" after my grandmother. Added tone control (now 5f2!)
5e3 Deluxe- "Owen" after my grandfather.
Orange Jaguar Conversion Thread- Converting MIM player jaguar to traditional jaguar.
Electric XII- This’ll take quite some time. Warmoth neck. Body cut and shaped by me.
Lunar Module 1 (6G15)- our favorite reverb circuit with some flash.
5f10 Harvard- Simple tweed harvard with some NOS glass. Great sound.
Shell Pink Parts Baritone Tele- cheap spare parts tele. tex mex pickups.

Last edited: Jun 06, 2022 19:03:20

6g15 Here we go! Built the chassis up in 2016. the Mod reverb pan didn't work, so I shipped the whole chassis to another state to store. UPS absolutely destroyed it. Broke transformers off the chassis and mangled two tube sockets.

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the piping went on beautifully, however it doesn't fit the cabinet now. going to build another one exactly like this. the piping pulls it all together.
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mock-up with piping. will look great when done.
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Last edited: Sep 23, 2020 16:12:08

6g2 Princeton - I also started this in 2016 in NYC. populated the circuit board and then forgot about it for 4 years. Finished the chassis in 2020. Amp will be a head with piggyback/tiltback hardware.

3/2021 edit: Corona has been hell for building things. This guy finally has a wooden home, soon to be covered in light blue tolex! It'll be piggyback on either a 2x10 or a 1x10" Tone Ring

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Here it is! Mocking up a custom faceplate design based on these colors and it's done. I'll probably give front panel express a shot with their digital printing plus control etching. Then I'll try filling the etching by hand with model paint and a syringe.

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8/28/21: speaker grill done

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Last edited: Aug 28, 2021 18:34:22

I like your ideas. The Voxy Super sounds fascinating.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

5f1 - This was built while I debugged the 6g2 Princeton. Chassis was completed in an evening, fired it up and it works well. Has a hemp cone 8" speaker in an oversized cabinet so I can swap a 10" if needed. Will be covered with Pink tolex. This amp will be named "Betty" after my grandmother (who loved Pink).

8/3/21: finished except for the name badge and tube chart!
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Here's a photo of the tolexing in progress. I made a custom seafoam power cable for it.

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added a tone control (sounds so much better now)
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and added a negative feedback switch.
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I will be adding reverb to this amp. Found a slick little swart-styled add on 3 knob tube spring reverb that is minimally invasive.

Last edited: Aug 04, 2021 02:47:36

6g4 Super - This one will take some time. I have all the small parts minus tubes and transformers. I am using sozo caps and either my usual classic tone transformers, or maybe Mercury for a change. I'm cutting and drilling all my turret boards by hand out of Blue garolite.

Here's a shot of the color scheme I'm going for. Grey tolex with grey and burgundy appointments. Neve style knobs. Faceplate will be white and black.

Will either be head or 2x10 combo. Planning for 2x10 with 1x15 extension cabinet.

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8/22/21 edit: need two pots, and final wiring can commence.

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Last edited: Aug 28, 2021 18:36:18

5e3 Deluxe - "Owen" named after my handy, blue-collar, tinkerer Grandfather. This will be all working-man components (mallory, sprague) and USA transformers: just scored a new soursound 5e3 output transformer.

Amp will be covered with a blue/white toile Hawaiian fabric. My grandparents loved visiting Hawaii in the 60s-80s before I was born. They had a huge wallpaper mural in their kitchen in a blue and white Hawaiian print.

ignore the knobs, just what I grabbed from my parts bin. Will do white knobs similar to blonde fender amps.
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update 9/13/20: hand cut/drilled the fiberboard and mounted turrets. will begin populating components today!
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circuit with flying leads almost complete. just need transformers and a cabinet.
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8/15/21 Finally added a handle. Ready for lacquered fabric and grill cloth.

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Last edited: Aug 17, 2021 18:07:30

synchro wrote:

I like your ideas. The Voxy Super sounds fascinating.

Thanks! I will see what it sounds like before committing 100%, but I've got so many flavors of Fender on the bench right now. Curious to see what tone-shaping I can do. Not blazing any trails obviously.

Cool stuff. How do you do the labels on the chassis?

Fantastic ideas and aesthetics - love your style. Also, digging the Decoboom pickguard on the Strat! Cool

The doofus formerly known as Snorre
Surfysonic on YouTube
World Famous Philistines: 2014 - 2015
K39: 2013 - 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv9JADQ4ukw

edwardsand wrote:

Cool stuff. How do you do the labels on the chassis?

thanks!
the blue deluxe was powder coated that way and the labels etched and painted/filled. If I were doing a run of them for sale, I would have my own designs and control names done. For all the non-tweed style stuff I'm currently designing my own faceplates and rear plates in the adobe suite.

Last edited: Mar 31, 2022 14:14:37

Surfysonic wrote:

Fantastic ideas and aesthetics - love your style. Also, digging the Decoboom pickguard on the Strat! Cool

thank you! i love the decoboom stuff. I want one for my jazzmaster too, but the design is out of stock. I also make custom cables in obnoxious colors to help pay for a handful of resistors here and there.

with no access to a shop, i had to hand cut this g10 fiberboard with a hacksaw, drill each turret hole with a battery powered drill, and stake and swage each turret with a tack hammer... not fun, but the 5e3 circuit board is done.

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Last edited: Sep 13, 2020 14:25:55

These builds don't look DIY!

I was wondering what type of adhesive you use for the Tolex? I built a reverb unit a while ago, and I was really pleased with the cabinet. I Tolexed it and it looked very smart. But after a coupe of years the Tolex has curled off in places and shrunk around the joins. It looks terrible now!

I used a good quality spray adhesive, but I must have done something wrong!

http://thewaterboarders.bandcamp.com/

GASP! I bow to your skills and design concepts. The Hawaiian print grill cloth is just brilliant.

Do you make your own chassis? So many people lament the lack of choices.

Daniel Deathtide

Last edited: Oct 12, 2020 10:20:17

Great hobby for lockdown.

He who dies with the most tubes... wins

Surf Daddies

DeathTide wrote:

GASP! I bow to your skills and design concepts. The Hawaiian print grill cloth is just brilliant.

Do you make your own chassis? So many people lament the lack of choices.

thanks! I've been quiet designing my own cabinets and chassis. once I can get access to a wood shop, the cabinets will flow. doing a more MCM inspired teak cabinet for my next reverb unit for a friend.

chassis are tough, i can design them now in autoCAD but I don't have access to a metal shop with a brake and welder quite yet. I can hand drill, and actually own a nice set of metal punches, but access to a chassis sized laser would make things easy.

I have some absurd design and aesthetic choices that are very time consuming to manufacture, but I'm VERY excited to get some prototypes done.

Last edited: Oct 29, 2020 13:26:13

da-ron wrote:

These builds don't look DIY!

I was wondering what type of adhesive you use for the Tolex? I built a reverb unit a while ago, and I was really pleased with the cabinet. I Tolexed it and it looked very smart. But after a coupe of years the Tolex has curled off in places and shrunk around the joins. It looks terrible now!

I used a good quality spray adhesive, but I must have done something wrong!

so this is a huge concern of mine. I'm in california, and every good adhesive is banned here. I've used the mojo tru glu stuff and if you use it within DAYS of opening, it seems to be solid so far. i re did a friends showman cabinet with the tru-glu down in florida and the humidity caused the ends to pull up a little.

I have tried spray 3m Super 77 in the past when I tolex covered a pedalboard, and that never seemed to cure properly.

the champ and reverb unit I've been using a DAP water based cement product along with a heat gun, a rubber roller, and a hard metal roller for the seams. seems to be solid. once they were completely tolexed, I left them in a low humidity instrument room for about a month.

hide glue of course was the old-fashioned way, but I haven't even tried to research that.

finally some updates! pine head cabinet for the 6g2 Princeton is sanded and hardware installed. just need to add piggyback hardware. tolex is cut and prepped.

the time consuming part is the faceplate. I have a complex idea and need to fabricate, powder coat, paint, silk screen, and clearcoat the whole dang thing. Plus one for the back panel as well.

Last edited: Mar 14, 2021 21:16:49

cosmonaut wrote:

the time consuming part is the faceplate. I have a complex idea and need to fabricate, powder coat, paint, silk screen, and clearcoat the whole dang thing. Plus one for the back panel as well.

Holy crap! I am seriously impressed that you can even list the steps! Man, I’d LOVE to have that knowledge and skill.

Daniel Deathtide

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