building from a kit (give me info)

[teletard]

I want to build from a kit. my soldering high points have been doing pickups and a few wires on some switches. with the instructions how really difficult is it if you never have built anything electronic. i am the guy who when builds a model, it never looks as good as it did on the box. will there be lots of problems or issues that come up which you would need electronic info to get through the problem. please let me know your honest opinion. i would hate to step into a build and end up wasting the product i had and have to take my incorrectly started problem and have somebody else have to fix/finish it.

[JohnnyCrash]

I am the guy who builds the little model car and it turns out looking like a rusted shopping cart.

I suggest reading up on safety first and foremost.

Second, read up on soldering... the most common issue is people thinking they know how to solder properly and strongly and then their amp makes weird noises when cranked - or it just croaks.

After the above two things, just do it. I have never used a kit yet, all scratch builds. Very few of my builds were directly from the schematic... most I modded or frankenstein'ed.

I have zero electronics skills/training and knew nothing about amps... by now I've built probably a dozen for myself and know how to troubleshoot/fix.

Now I do my own woodowrking too... that was funny the first few cabs in - it looked like a kindergarten class project gone awry.

Do it, you wont regret it.

[teleamp]

Allen Amps sells kits with detailed comprehensive intructions. David Allen is an Electrical Engineer and his kits go together without any surprises. He offers email tech support, but it isn't needed if you follow the instruction manual.

Mission Amps offers a 5E3 kit that is tops as far as 5E3's go. Bruce Collins has sold 1000's of these kits, his chassis, transformers, eyelet boards are the best. he doesn't have an instruction manual, but has a comprehensive layout drawing that is easy to follow.

I have built several of each for different artist and highly reccomend them. I have heard good things about Marsh and Metro, but I have no firsthand experience with them.

MikeY

[teleamp]

Duplicate

[sjhusting]

+1 for what's already been said.

When I got into this, the idea that I would be mucking about with 400 volts scared the beejeezus out of me. I read everything I could for about a year until I felt I was ready to try something simple. In the meantime, I biased my own amp (HRDev) and nearly killed myself - my hand was shaking so bad from fear, the chances that the (isolated) screwdriver would touch something it shouldn't was um, approaching 100%. The first power on of my first amp was also adrenalin-producing; the fear factor was high. What's the point? The comparisons to building model planes isn't valid - if you screw up a plastic model, nothing bad happens, unless you inject the glue into your nostril. So read up on safety.

There's a lot more to building an amp than just connecting the components together, and, imho, this is the hard part - clean solder joints, good lead dress, problem fixing, and so on. So, it's a good idea to start with a proven design, with good instructions, whether a kit, or internet project. The Allen and Mission kits get consistently good reviews from people, as using high quality parts, good instructions (in whatever form), and good support. Probably a good place to start. And I like the Mission Amps We'll-Fix-It-For-You-For-$75 deal.

steven