As promised, I'm going to start showing you some of the guitar amplifiers I've built. I've actually been tinkering with amps for as long as I have with guitars. My first attempt as an over-ambitious and under-informed teenager involved a cheap stereo console rescued from the neighbours' trash. It was a cheap power-transformerless design, and the experience of turning it into a guitar amp was so shocking (fortunately, only 120 volts... over and over and over) that I didn't dare touch one again for nearly 12 years.
But then, if you build guitars for a living, what are you going to do for a hobby?
Building amps is completely different from building guitars: hardly any woodwork, no room for improvisation, and an awful lot of math. It's more like learning a new language than honing a new skill. But the goal is ultimately the same: to create sound, nay TONE. Tone you've never heard, or heard only in your head and need to bring to life, or even tones vagely remembered and in need of resuscitation. And let me tell you a secret that most luthiers won't share: most of the tone is coming from the amp, not the guitar. Just between you and me...
Clic on the pic to go to my tube amplifier gallery. Just one amp there so far, more coming soon!