sneak peek

[Rabbitz]

Trouble is, you slap some sense into them, they go out for morning tea and you've got to do it all over again

[Marcel]

As much as I'd love to be able to buy an Australian tube amp kit and build it I find it very difficult to recommend to anyone to go and supply such a kit to the public.

Safety of the builder would be the biggest concern.

But with that said, a quick look in the Jaycar catalogue shows quite a few mains powered kits, with some kits having all the electronics at mains potential, so it is not an impossible task to market a tube amp kit. With due diligence incorporated into the kit instructions a tube amp kit could be a very rewarding challenge, however I think appropriate pricing would be needed to divert those simply seeking a cheap option to look elsewhere.

$300 for a complete 5W tube combo is reasonably competitive. Leaves room for a 15W or 30W tube combo for slightly more.

[FrankenWashie]

As much as I'd love to be able to buy an Australian tube amp kit and build it I find it very difficult to recommend to anyone to go and supply such a kit to the public.

Safety of the builder would be the biggest concern.

But with that said, a quick look in the Jaycar catalogue shows quite a few mains powered kits, with some kits having all the electronics at mains potential, so it is not an impossible task to market a tube amp kit. With due diligence incorporated into the kit instructions a tube amp kit could be a very rewarding challenge, however I think appropriate pricing would be needed to divert those simply seeking a cheap option to look elsewhere.

$300 for a complete 5W tube combo is reasonably competitive. Leaves room for a 15W or 30W tube combo for slightly more.

Yes, electrickery is tricky, that's why I have a fully qualified Igor to apply the electrodes and wire the lightning rod in the FrankenLab

[Marcel]

Oh, the joys of having a fully qualified Igor at your disposal...

Still, I beg to differ there FW...

There isn't that much trickery go on with electrickery... pretty simple really .. it just wants to go from where there is plenty to where there is none via the quickest easiest shortest path.. and if that happens to be via you it WILL take that path EVERY time!!! ...

It's kinda lazy of it if you think about it, It doesn't care, and it will avoid doing work if it can, and it can make a real mess of things given half the chance. A bit like some teenagers...lol

[wazkelly]

And there's the reason why I have bought 3 combo amps for around $300 - $400 each rather than try and build one myself for fear of frying oneself from an earth leakage.

[DrNomis_44]

If there are any of you still thinking of building a valve guitar amp after all the safety warnings we've given you, may I first strongly recommend investing money in a decent portable ELCB (Earth Leakage Circuit Breaker), since it could save your life, I seriously need to invest some money into one too, might see if my local big green shed has them in stock this week.

[JB RETRO]

If there are any of you still thinking of building a valve guitar amp after all the safety warnings we've given you, may I first strongly recommend investing money in a decent portable ELCB (Earth Leakage Circuit Breaker), since it could save your life, I seriously need to invest some money into one too, might see if my local big green shed has them in stock this week.

As a licenced builder we plug everything into a Earth leakage board on site. Having said that all new homes have an Earth leakage fuse as part of the switch board. It's worth putting one in your house even if its old and from memory, at least in Victoria, if an electrician does any work on your house, he is supposed to install one and get rid of old fuses.

[Simon Barden]

Although an ELCB (or RCCB/RCD as they are now called) won't save you from a possibly lethal capacitor discharge if you don't allow enough time for the power supply capacitors to discharge naturally or you forget to actively discharge them whilst working on a just turned-off valve amp circuit. But having one is always better than not having one.

[wazkelly]

Comforting to know that if you cop a boot from the circuit you may not self combust thanks to the ELCB.

Yeah, right, having had a few brushes with electrical shocks in the past taught me to leave things well alone and have an expert do that sort of stuff instead.

[corsair]

Amen to old chopsticks for poking around the innards of a valve amp! And, do you know, you never learn; I got belted once as a youngster from the caps in my old Holden - they're as big as bloody dinner plates and bite! - so learned to discharge the caps before sticking anything organic or metal in there but when I had our stuff shipped from NZ to Aus after some years in Europe, I had cause to poke around in the chassis, and was happily poking about when I suddenly thought about the caps. The train of thought was that it had been years since the old cow had been powered up so I'd be OK but hmmm; perhaps I'll just go through the discharge procedure, and there was indeed a little juice left in there!! Probably not enough to do me any major damage, but still - safety first, eh?!?

Now. Let's talk about DC voltage and piddling on an electric fence. An electric fence designed to keep deer away from the boundary, i.e. an outrigger style fence....