My NEW AMP being born

[StukaJU87]

Dagnall sounds right. I believe they built transformers for Marshall and many original replacements are Dagnall. So i guess that's a nice choice for your amp.
What's your choice of tubes ? I guess Svetlana EL34's ?
In my BadCat Clone i will use 2 Svetlana EL34's, a JJ GZ34, 1 Tungsol 12ax7 for V1 and the rest of the preamp tubes will be some chinese 12ax7.

Flo

It will have EL34's in it. Not sure of the brand. He has a shop full of NOS tubes so I am sure he will be picking a decent set for me. I am not sure what brand of preamp tubes he will use yet either. Like I said, he has literally hundreds of boxed tubes of all brands dating waaay back, so I will have the option of trying others as well.

Can you explain the reason for using 1 Tungsol in V1 and Chinese in the other spots? You have to spell it out for me, I am green when it comes to electronics.

[Infernal Death]

There is a german tube store which has a nice info pdf on this:

http://www.tube-town.net/info/doc/tt-tubemap.pdf

I picked the tubes while reading this pdf (cool read, english and german). The chinese preamp tubes are mentioned as TT tubes. (those are labeled from the store, TT = tube town). As for the preamp i didn't want to go the "extrem" setting so i didn't choose a TT for V1. Tungsols seem to be a great way to get much tone and not over the top extremness from the preamp section. For this i have my rectifier.
But i have to say i haven't used a Tungsol tube yet so it's also a bit of a experiment. Nice thing is swaping tubes is very easy and fast. I still have some other 12ax7 laying around.

Flo

[dangerous_dave]

This is something I would never have thought of doing.

I hope it all goes to plan.

[StukaJU87]

That was an interesting chart. Thanks for posting it.

[Infernal Death]

No Problem. I also found it very useful when i first discovered it. I always buy my tube stuff there, great shop that i can recommand although i guess not a good choice for you american guys.

Flo

[StukaJU87]

Well, Jeff just sent me pics of the completed board. Here ya go.

[Infernal Death]

Very nice. Can't wait to see the next build progress pics.

Here is a pic of my work. Just confirmed that all the transformers and tubes are fitting to the holes i drilled



Oh yeah i suck at taking pics haha.

Flo

[StukaJU87]

Flo, man. That looks great. I envy the guys that can build like you , Pete and JG and actually KNOW what you are doing.

Jeff set a couple early chassis pics.

[Spivonious]

Just out of curiosity, what is the parts cost of this amp, i.e. how much profit does Marshall make on every 2203?

[StukaJU87]

Just out of curiosity, what is the parts cost of this amp, i.e. how much profit does Marshall make on every 2203?

Ya know, I am not 100% positive. Jeff had to buy the parts at retail price since he is not buying in bulk. The total he gave me was 1200 bux. Now he may have worked in something for himself in there too and that is ok. I do not expect him to do this for cost. I know that some parts he is putting in mine are like the early 2203's, not the stuff Marshall is pushing now.

[Infernal Death]

I think $1200 really isn't unreasonable. After all this is a complete handbuilt one-off amp. And from what i can see in the pics, the parts are really good quality. And from my own experience i can say it takes quite some hours to build such an amp, even if you use premade cabinets and a already punched chassis.

Spivonious i don't think you can equal "Retail cost - parts cost = profit". After all the part cost normally is just a small cost part. Cost of Labor, renting a factory and many other things add to your costs.
Marshall definitely has some nice price breaks for their parts. I mean they probably buy their parts in ten-thousands of quantity. So you really cannot compare the cost of a homebrew with the cost of a professionally manufactured amp (note here that professionally manufactured doesn't mean better build quality than homebrew).

Flo

[Spivonious]

Spivonious i don't think you can equal "Retail cost - parts cost = profit". After all the part cost normally is just a small cost part. Cost of Labor, renting a factory and many other things add to your costs.
Marshall definitely has some nice price breaks for their parts. I mean they probably buy their parts in ten-thousands of quantity. So you really cannot compare the cost of a homebrew with the cost of a professionally manufactured amp (note here that professionally manufactured doesn't mean better build quality than homebrew).

Flo

Oh I know there's other costs. I guess I'm wondering whether or not it's worth it to build it yourself, or to just shell out the cash to Marshall. Sure the build quality will be much higher if you make it yourself, plus you learn a whole lot about how amps work and how to fix them if something goes wrong, but if it's going to cost more, then I have a hard time seeing the bonus.

I'm coming from the world of computer building, where building it yourself is often hundreds of dollars cheaper than going through a big-name computer maker e.g. Dell, HP.

[Infernal Death]

Oh ok. Well from a simple "safe-money" point of view i wouldn't start to build a JCM 800 clone. Especially if you consider that used JCM 800 aren't very expensive. If that's your desire i think you have to step up a bit for example for a SLO100. There you can save quite some money. It's realistic to build one for maybe around $1k and i guess you know what the originals cost.

It makes sense if you want to have one build to very high standards, or you want to learn to build amps. Or if you want to mod the amp to suite your tastes. That's one of the biggest advantages, it can make your selfbuild amp the perfect amp for you.

Personally i feel that the best way to get into amp building is building some pedals/meanwhile doing research on how to build amps. Then move on to simple amps. Like 1 channel, 5 watt single ended amps. A great starting point is the AX84 project, look here: http://www.ax84.com/
And then jumping into bigger stuff, more channels, higher wattage, high gain, whatever.

Flo

[StukaJU87]

The truth is, I was not in the market for a new amp at all. I have a 5150 head that is in pretty nice shape. It is just that when I test drove the JTM45 clone that Jeff made, I really liked it.

I told him it would be cool to have a 100 head Marshall head, kind of like my old Super Lead that was modded with a master vol. He went home and perused his schematics and books and asked if I would like him to build this 2203 since it has a master volume already. Fukk it, why not?

Truth be told, I need this amp like I need a hole in the head. But hey, I'll take it anyway.

[StukaJU87]

Few pics from today.