brianh Posted March 7, 2009 Posted March 7, 2009 Inspired by the 'cake pan' amps we saw on eBay, a buddy and I made a slightly more attractive Champ amp out of a wooden planter box from IKEA. The boxes are dovetailed and IKEA's price is $5.99 + $4.99 for the handles. It uses (1) 12AX7 and (1) 6L6 or similar tubes. Since they're top mounted, it's easy to swap out and hear your favorite tube combos. I used a router to bevel the edges, refinished it and drilled out holes for the handles, volume and tone pententiometers, tube sockets, transformers, input jacks, speaker jack, power switch, etc. Future versions will be internally shielded, have a jeweled power indicator and external fuse holder: I also built a little matching dual 6" speaker cab using slightly larger IKEA planter boxes ($7.99 each) and Jensen Mod6 loudspeakers from Tube Depot: In any case, I think we spent about $150 in parts incuding the speakers and cab, and a day or two in labor. It sounds amazingly good, breaks up real nice, and being able to swap tubes out in a hurry lets you get a quick take on how various tube brands and types sound. Tip: spend some time sorting through the planter boxes and check for seam gaps and cracks - some come through better than others. I'll post pics of the raw boxes tomorrow. PS: if you burn your house down building one of these, don't blame me! Cheers,
RSDx Posted March 7, 2009 Posted March 7, 2009 That project came out really really nice - cool lil one-of-a-kind amp ya got there, brian
Jazzric Posted March 7, 2009 Posted March 7, 2009 Simply beautiful.... ....see here...now this what I'd like to learn how to make and do...great job bro...I bet shes sounds sooo good...
wedgeSG Posted March 7, 2009 Posted March 7, 2009 It really looks great!!! Feeling kinda inspired by it... what and where(?) is IKEA
brianh Posted March 7, 2009 Author Posted March 7, 2009 It really looks great!!! Feeling kinda inspired by it... what and where(?) is IKEA http://www.ikea.com/us/en/ Most (but not all) major cities worldwide have an IKEA furniture store. The closest one to Tennessee is in Atlanta, GA. The boxes are in the home storage/plant section. Cheers,
Ricochet Posted March 8, 2009 Posted March 8, 2009 Very cool. BTW. You can get these cool little vintage Epi amp-handle repros from Ikea as well. They're called "LANSA". :-)
m-theory Posted March 8, 2009 Posted March 8, 2009 Nice project! That came out really nice! Not exactly a road dog, by any means, but a really nice-looking homebound amp. I'm curious about the amp itself. How are you able to run 6l6s and 6v6s in this, if it's a Champ? Champ iron was notoriously puny. Have you run the amp on a scope to see what non-6v6 tubes are actually running like? I would think that the larger tubes would put a serious strain on stock champ iron.
brianh Posted March 8, 2009 Author Posted March 8, 2009 M, Well, we didn't really stick to the Champs specs exactly. My buddy has a basement full of used parts, so a lot of it is stuff he had laying around including spare iron. The power tube that's in it now is a Zenith NOS 6EZ5, and that's the only PT I've put in it so far except a Russian 6N6C which doesn't sound very good at all. I should say that this first attempt is just a proof of concept, we have two more in progress, one of which is getting the biggest OT we can physically fit in the box. This is really meant to be just a conversation piece and practice amp, I have no intention to sell it or take it on the road. And yes he's scoped it, but I inadvertently left the schematic and notes at his house. When I pick them up next week, I'll post. In the meantime, here's a pic of the underside. You can see there's not a lot of room under there, and it ain't pretty. Note the internal 4/8 ohm switch and a soldered inline fuse. We'll be rearranging and neatening things up in the next prototypes including external impedance switch and fuse holder:
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