How did you get your start in amp repairs?

[lord preset]

I read for 5 years before I touched an iron. Unlike the superidiots that keep popping in I am terrified of electricity with anecdotes.

You read for 5 years and you still touched the iron?

The iron is hot. You're not supposed to touch it.

[xtian]

You read for 5 years and you still touched the iron?

The iron is hot. You're not supposed to touch it.

Winner!

That goes in the sticky.

[Reeltarded]

It has a touchable end. My point.

[matt h]

(deleted)

[johnnyreece]

I never had a tube amp when I was younger. Was always a fan of my cousin's Crate VC 50. After a few years, I decided I wanted a tube amp, but didn't want any of the PCB versions I could afford. I have been handy with a soldering iron since I was in elementary school. So, I did a lot of studying, saved up my change, and bought a Weber 5e3 kit. Funny, I thought I screwed it up, but found out I had a faulty Copper Cap rectifier (on my first ever build; what a pisser). Once my cheap musician friends realized I could do that, they started giving me their cheap PCB crap to work on.

I think I got hosed.

[ER]

My grandpa played guitar and got me started, he was one of those guys that would go to the dumps and come home with more than he left with and always kept me in half working stuff and parts. He wound his own pickups back in the 50's to get electrified. A lot of the guys at my church were old school HP engineers and I would always be asking them how to fix the latest amp from grandpa that got smoked.

I also live in Sonoma County so there is a whole bunch of hippy tone nuts here, alembic, two rock, mesa boogie, etc. and some really good sounding clubs, so there was some real tone snobbery and mythos going on, as well as lots of good brains to pick. Guys with real dumbles, no stock guitars, etc.

I was a teachers assistant in electronics in high school and on the light and sound crew for our auditorium because I needed more credits to graduate, there were a lot of musicians at our school and we could build pedals as class projects. My best friend's dad and uncle were the shop teachers at our school so building guitars and DIY was going on all the time. Out of that small handful of friends there's Doyle Bramhall II, the shop foreman for Ribecke guitars, the head set-up guy for Alembic, the guy that started 3rd power amps, and probably some others...people that are OCD about tone and not afraid to roll up their sleeves. I worked for EMG for a while back in the 80's and learned a lot there too.

Playing in bands I always managed to have really nice sounding amps, wish I still had them, because I sure can't afford them now, that's why I stated building my own amps to get the tone I want at a price I can afford. Sold all my old stuff to help pay my way through college after I got married.

I started out building hi-fi stuff and speakers, because I could never afford the prices, and could make better sounding stuff anyways. Spent a lot of time a the library and reading old books, the internet really ramped up the learning curve though, especially this site.

I only build stuff for myself and family, but I have done some repairs and tweaks for my Chiropractor, and managed to keep my own stuff and bandmates running well over the years. I may build some of my own designs in the future to put out there but only if it seems worth doing. Just happy playing my own gear right now.

[TUBEDUDE]

Man, '63 was a good year for a bumper crop of solder slingers! I am a '55 vintage however. I remember sticking a knife into a wall outlet when I was 3 or 4. I had dreams of being chased by Freddy Kilowatt, a cartoon stick figure made of lighting bolts the electric company used in advertising. Built my first crystal radio at 6, over the next 10 years, took apart everything i could get my hands on, (getting very little of it back together), figured out how to fix my grandpa' s tube receiver, took electronics in high school, college, and in the Army. I learned Avionics and Automated Test Equipment while killing commies for mommy, spent 2 years getting parts and building a twin reverb clone, spent the last 20 years repairing amps and guitars, building all manner of amps using glorious NOS 6V6 duets and quads (lately in dumblish fashion), and learning how to construct run on sentences.
Turns out I got it honestly though. Around the time of my mother's death, I found out she worked for the NSA as a communications guru.

[TUBEDUDE]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention, since '87 I've been in biomedical engineering and am racing to the finish line of retirement or death, whichever comes first.

[M Fowler]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention, since '87 I've been in biomedical engineering and am racing to the finish line of retirement or death, whichever comes first.

Yeah 10 days before my retirement date I found myself on the operating table undergoing a 5 vessel coronary artery bypass grafting. It has been three years on January 21, 2015 since that surgery.

We had tube amps long before SS amps so messed around with many SE and PP mono block chassis pulls from junked out audio equipment either at the dump or auction sales with pop. Roller rink type amps, small separate 45 rpm record player units hooked up to those tube amps. We had tube radios before the 9v pocket radios. Didn't have radios in our 1948 & 1953 Dodge farm trucks. The truck battery was in the drivers side floor so brothers and I wired up leads from pocket radio to large washers and slipped the washers over the battery posts presto radio.

As a teen I converted many RCA and Zenith amps to guitar amps. It all started there for me.

[NickC]

I am also of '55 vintage. Studied electronics, and did radio in Michigan. Got bit by the music bug, and bounced around for decades doing day jobs and working a guitar by night.

Started tinkering / reworking tube hi-fi amps (Eico, Dynaco, etc) into guitar amps in my mid-teens.

I rarely do any commercial repair work any more. Last time was when an insurance appraiser brought me an AMS RMX16 in pieces. They had covered a claim and were looking to recoup whatever they could from the unit. They'd given the unit to a repair facility in California. But a year went by and it never got fixed, so they demanded its return. A so-called "technician" had completely disassembled the unit, pulled every card out of it (there are a lot of them), and then shipped it loose (with no packing) rattling around the inside of the chassis stuffed into a single-layer cardboard box, from California to New York, shipped economy. It was sickening, a total loss.

I build for myself, and occasionally repair things for friends. If they bring me something PCB, I'll open it up and look. If it's a monstrosity, I'm not bashful about sending it back like I got it (unfixed). Life is too short for futile endeavors (aside from doing music, naturally).