My bizarro 18watter is up and running

[Moose]

A short bit of backstory...

6 months ago I got a wild hair to make an amp that was covered in bling. Nothing on it should be useless, but what's on it should be -- pretty. The key was, as much as possible had to be made or improved by me.

I made my own chassis from scratch (backwards, I might add, because I was retarded that day), bent 'em, polished them, and gave them to a friend who was going to get them powdercoated translucent red. Unfortunately, the powdercoater lost them for 4 months and only got them back to me 2 weeks ago. The chassis is gorgeous, with a deep candy-apple finish. Here's a quick pic of it on my bench.



I also anodized a bunch of fasteners, some tube shields, and turned some aluminum knobs and anodized them. Here's an example (shields not on, just the sockets as they're getting placed)



Next up is a combo cabinet, purple tolex, oxblood grillcloth, anodized bolts and finish washers holding the circuit cover on, and the valence panel will be a lovely, very red plank of Satine I've been saving.

I named this amp Ruby, because the lady it is named after threatened me with death if I didn't.

Anyway, the thing fired off today. One problem, it squeals without something plugged into the first channel input. Obviously I miswired a switch. Otherwise it's perfect, quiet, sounds great, no odd noise problems.

It's quite a fun amp, I must say.

[Shea]

What a beauty! I want more ! Think about putting up an album in the gallery.

Are you into custom bikes / choppers?

Looks like the turret board and wiring are very tidy, from what we can see in the photos.

Shea

[Komboking]

Moose you old dawg! Looks great! And if I know you, you did it for next to nothing!

[AdamK]

Very. VERY cool, Moose.

Is getting those bits and pieces anodized very expensive? Know someone at an anodizing shop?

Great work,

Adam

[Plexi]

Very nice looking work!! Its good to see people use different ideas they have. As they say, good things come to those who wait. Sometimes its also good to take your time and do things right. When done in a hurry, you usually will make mistakes,and when done, always wish you'd done something different. Someone a while back posted an amp pic where it had a gold plated chassis and covered in something like Jaguar leather or vinyl..Maybe someone saved the pic.. Very cool looking amp.
Richie

[Moose]

Very. VERY
Is getting those bits and pieces anodized very expensive? Know someone at an anodizing shop?

Actually, I did the anodizing on my back porch using drain cleaner and a battery charger and I color things with RIT fabric dye. It's sort of a giant pain in the butt, but I'm enough of a dork to think it's cool.

The chassis powdercoating was done through a friend. It would NOT have been cheap unless I did a large run, except for the fact that I let them sit on it until they sprayed that color for something else. They have to spend an hour to clean the equipment, so doing one or two isn't cost effective. Took forever as I gave them the chassis last fall. Came out pretty, though.

[Moose]

What a beauty! I want more ! Think about putting up an album in the gallery.

I'll document it better when I have time. Those were quick photos while it was on my bench, and the circuit was only about half done. I put a few more up at http://toneslut.com/images/ruby if you want to just poke around. I intend to take better pics later.

And no, I'm not into custom bikes or choppers. I have a friend who manages a machine shop and who is going to be doing his quad frame custom, and he's the one who suggested the color of the chassis. Here are the shields to show the purple color -- a little darker but a close match to the tolex.



He's an engineer, I'm an engineer, another friend who was there is an engineer, and a fourth is an artist and custom car guy. When we started talking about making something different, the ideas started flowing and the whole concept got completely out of hand. Out of hand to the point where I was turning knobs on a lathe and polishing them on my drill press before anodizing:



Unfortunately, those knobs were dyed red and are a PERFECT match to the chassis, so they don't have any contrast at all. I'm going to have to make a new bath and strip and reanodize them so they can be purple like the shields.

Moose you old dawg! Looks great! And if I know you, you did it for next to nothing!

Actually, this wasn't totally cheap. The aluminum for the knobs cost me $20 -- though I got about 40 knobs out of it. The anodizing tank setup was probably $75-100 invested, considering I got lots of dye colors.

All the components are high quality, including a genuine Fender indicator and a purple jewel for good mojo. Using the old marshall style input jacks, a new heyboer trasformer set, new tubes, paper in oil caps, BC metal film resistors (I liked the red color better than the panasonic's blue MF resistors) One of the RF shielded IEC connectors, new tubes. The aluminum fasteners are not cheap, and I probably have $30-35 into fasteners -- though $10 of that is because I got the pre-anodized red nuts with the pretty purple inserts for the 4/40 fasteners. I had to build an extra turret board because I screwed the pooch and drilled the chassis backwards (my first time ever programming a Fadel). I even got aluminum standoffs for the circuit board because the chassis had open ends and you can see them. Yes, all 5 standoffs are anodized to match.

There's definitely a few hundred dollars into this amp, and what feels like a hundred hours before I started soldering!

Funny thing is, with the exception of the tube shields and the knobs, I can probably replicate this with off the shelf parts and do a run of 10 for about 20 hours of labor each. Even with the hand-made bling, I could do them with 25 hours each. I learned that much during the process of doing this and the 'wreck clone I finished last week.

[Plexi]

I don't know if you would even consider this but,next time you do this.if there is a next time. I would post and see if other members would want some done for there amp. I'm sure some would like to have something like that. Or do them up to kinda match the colors of the Marshall tolex colors.
I'd say there would be a good market for the different color stuff..make up a few bins to keep them seperated..and sell the to alot of the amp builders.
But like i said i don't know if it would be worth it to you. Anyway,just a thought.. People always are looking for something different..they might even say the purple helps the tone..or the red is hotter sounding,green for clean..etc Then you'll probably get the weird ideas of people asking if you can do Zebra striped ones,or some other exotic thing. Another thought..there used to be some tubes made by JJ or Tesla that you could get blue or red glass on the bottles.i'd have to look to see if they had them in EL84s..

Richie

[Moose]

Anyway,just a thought.. People always are looking for something different..they might even say the purple helps the tone..

Purple DOES help the tone! Something as esoteric as the incorrect jewel color can ruin everything. I think it's tied into the Market Follower circuit or something

And I have considered making bling for others. In fact, I intend to at some point or another. I just don't have the ability to satisfy demand at a reasonable price, and I don't have the cash to invest in the things I need to meet that demand.

I know there's a market for knobs other than gold, chrome, and black. I've got some designs, but I need lathe time and to build a jig for an overhead mill to do large enough batches. Otherwise, they take an hour each.

The tube shields are pure folly -- they end up weaker, scratch easily, and need special grounding considerations due to the fact that the anodizing is non-conductive so it needs to be scratched away from the base to make them actually work as a shield. But they're really cool looking.

One day, though. Hopefully sometime this year.