Which amp builder is the best BUILDER?

[homesick345]

In your opinion, which regular commercial amp builder (whether bulk builder or boutique/specialized) produces the best quality amps today?

What I mean is - irrespective of tone or subjective quality of sound, which amp has the most attention to detail & quality of parts & construction into his production?

I think this is interesting to know. Because we get so taken by the sound, that we equate quality with tone (which is a mistake), & forget about intrinsic quality aspects...

 

[telex76]

Bulk builder, it would be hard to beat DR. Z. Smaller builder, David Allen.

Even smaller, there are probably at least a hundred.

Without the subjective sound or tone, build quality doesn't count for much.
You wouldn't buy an amp if you hated the sound just because they used all the best components, and it was built to last a hundred years.

 

[bparnell57]

Traynor, both back in the day, and with the new PTP reissues, is difficult to beat.

I'd trust Muchxs to build me a lifetime amp.

If I decided to design and build a completely custom amp, I'd ensure it lasted 50+ years of regular use before it needed a tube or cap job. It mostly involves efficient chassis cooling, component spacing, over specced parts, NOS tubes, and run all tubes well within spec.

 

[homesick345]

Without the subjective sound or tone, build quality doesn't count for much

I agree - but as you said it - "subjective"

I am trying to dissociate this aspect, to concentrate on a purely objective engineering/manufacturing assessment

That being said - I would still be highly interested in finding out about amps that have a stellar construction, but still failed miserably in tone (& vice versa). I think both cases exist!

 

[WireLine]

The original HiWatts were pretty indestructable. BF Fenders, SVT era Ampegs, pretty much anything built to withstand the vigors of being on hard road use. Long before before the era of disposable technology and 'everyone is a tech' days

Nowadays it really is hard to say. Individual components make up a unit, and when the materials used to make those components are lacking, the whole process can suffer. Putting the human element back into manufacturing amps as much as possible may be expensive but would likely alleviate so many down line issues.

 

[mabley123]

I think George at Metropoulos Amps builds as good of an amp as possible. They also sound great.

I would also trust Muchxs to build a nice reliable amp.

 

[RomanS]

Carr amps get my vote, but then, I don't have a lot of first-hand experience with other high-end brands...

 

[deytookerjaabs]

You're equating following certain preferences for tolerance guidelines with quality. HUGE MISTAKE, that in and of itself implies that quality is a matter of opinion. Amps are assembled from parts, bottom line. It's up to you to decide if that input jack which supposedly fails 1 out of 500 times versus the one that fails 1 times out of 50 after X uses is a significant enough difference. Or, if your special electronic parts that fall within your preference for measurements/tolerance are going to have a superior outcome. The fact is, beyond measurement, there isn't a huge reason for actual scientific experiments testing each and every part 10,000 times to see the results in terms of how the part may change or fail. This isn't NASA, it's guitar amps. Some people will build for function, some for form, or a combination of the two. That beautiful hand carved tube pumpkin you spent more than your wedding ring on won't outperform a 50 dollar 80's peavey in your neighbors garage if function is what matters.

 

[wyndham]

I've had two amps built by Mark Sampson and they were both little tanks. Great tone and great features.

 

[vangoghsear]

I want to nominate Rick at Vintage Sound Amps and I can't disagree with Traynor. I don't have enough experience with Fender or Marshall and my luck with Peavey has been hit or miss.

 

[chezdeluxe]

For folks in Australia I have to recommend John Ratajczyk.

His build quality, including cab and tolex, is first class and his amps sound stellar.

I would part with my long cherished 63 Brown Deluxe before I relinquished my Ratajczyk Cream Reverb.

 

[JD0x0]

I would say probably some of the D-Style amp builders like, including HAD, himself, Bludotone, Welagen, Glaswerks. All those guys pay extreme attention to parts, they use different composition caps and resistors to tune the amps tone, subtly. Carefully placed parts, with mechanical connections before they're soldered, point to point, and turret boards handwired. It's almost necessary with the D-style circuit, as it tends to be extremely sensitive.

beautiful amps. Notice how there's varying types of resistors and caps throughout the amp. Brown 'Dale' resistors as well as blue stripped ones. I think I see some Polypropylene caps, if I'm not mistaken and quite a few 6PS Polyesters. Not sure what those blue rectangular ones in the preamp are, but as you can see there's careful component selection and not just one type of cap throughout, even though there could have been and it would've saved some production costs

 

[neville5000]

Reeves carries on the Hiwatt tradition, 65 Amps are great, the two Matchless I've had were solid, as mentioned Dr. Z. Then there's the mil spec PCB builders: Bogner, Soldano, THD, Aiken, etc... that are every bit as good as the handwired stuff. The better question would be which of the builders aren't up to par so people know specific brands to avoid. Even then, sometimes it's just a turd making it to the punch bowl.

 

[holgaguy]

What about Mark Bartel at Tone King?

 

[muchxs]

I would say probably some of the D-Style amp builders like, including HAD, himself, Bludotone, Welagen, Glaswerks. All those guys pay extreme attention to parts, they use different composition caps and resistors to tune the amps tone, subtly. Carefully placed parts, with mechanical connections before they're soldered, point to point, and turret boards handwired. It's almost necessary with the D-style circuit, as it tends to be extremely sensitive.

beautiful amps. Notice how there's varying types of resistors and caps throughout the amp.

A thick layer of RTV silicone will hide all that from prying eyes.


Let's have a shootout or better yet, a drop- off. We'll tumble them down a flight of stairs until they don't work no more. I figure carpeted wooden stairs are o.k. to give the cabinets a little bit of a break.

We'll hand out two prizes, first for the one that lasts the longest before its tubes fail and another prize for the one that takes the most tumbles before it becomes unplayable even after field expedient repairs.

Real Steel is in rotation on cable TV.

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Reeves carries on the Hiwatt tradition, 65 Amps are great, the two Matchless I've had were solid, as mentioned Dr. Z. Then there's the mil spec PCB builders: Bogner, Soldano, THD, Aiken, etc... that are every bit as good as the handwired stuff. The better question would be which of the builders aren't up to par so people know specific brands to avoid. Even then, sometimes it's just a turd making it to the punch bowl.

I had a Reeves over here a while ago that was accidentally subjected to the tumble down the stairs test. It passed.


They tell me time is money. Marginal builders tend to sell a lot of amps because they're inexpensive.

That beautiful hand carved tube pumpkin you spent more than your wedding ring on won't outperform a 50 dollar 80's peavey in your neighbors garage if function is what matters.

We're not prejudiced. Bring your fifty buck Peavey. We'll tumble that one down the stairs, too.

 

[JD0x0]

Didn't they used to drop Hiwatts off the top of the building, retube, and test for QC? I heard that somewhere. I'd bet they could take it.

 

[homesick345]

My Dr Z passed the tumble-down test. It took a hit on the airport tarmac, that broke the cabinet (212 combo) on the upper shoulder joint. It was severe enough for the trannies to lean to one side - not unlike the Pisa Tower

Almost cried when I got the amp.

10 years later, it never missed a beat, never needed repair. (I glued the cab, & that's it)

But that was 2005. When the good Dr Zaite would take orders & answer the phone personally. Who knows if "they still make them like they used to"?

 

[muchxs]

Didn't they used to drop Hiwatts off the top of the building, retube, and test for QC? I heard that somewhere. I'd bet they could take it.

You'll find that when you subject and amp to acceleration then rapidly put on the brakes the weight of the transformers tends to bend the chassis. Depends on the chassis, depends on the transformers.

My Dr Z passed the tumble-down test. It took a hit on the airport tarmac, that broke the cabinet (212 combo) on the upper shoulder joint. It was severe enough for the trannies to lean to one side - not unlike the Pisa Tower

'70s Fenders are well built with a thick steel chassis and welded corners. Still, the weight of the power transformer tends to bend the chassis and even tear out the spot welds in the corners when they crash.

The control panel surface of large '60s and '70s Fenders such as the Twin reverb and Super Reverb is rarely straight. Some of 'em have a pretty good arc to 'em by now.


If I were to build an amp that would withstand re- entry from space... I'd start with a length of extruded aluminum square tubing as used for the entries for shopping malls. Open up one side on a vertical mill then use the resulting slab of alloy to close up the open ends. A little tig welding would add gussets and / or girdles to restrain the transformers. In other words an amp chassis built like a modern sportbike chassis ought to keep the chassis geometry in the sweet spot.

Redundancy is your friend when it comes to something built for military or aerospace applications. In a tube amp that means a cathode biased AC30 style EL84 output section could have a tube or two go out and still function. The bias circuit can be designed to track as tubes go out. Just about anything that has four power amp tubes will happily run on two.

Two channels means one can go down while the other continues to function. If both channels fail tubes can be borrowed from one channel to make the other channel work.

It may seem counter- intuitive but lightweight parts crash better than heavy ones. A speaker with a neodymium magnet is less likely to tear the baffle loose.