18Watt.com

Hey,this looks like a great site !!!! My first time here and it looks great !! I want to ask a newbie question. What is the average cost of building your own 18w amp head ???? Any ideas ???? Thnx..... I listened to the sound clips and fell in love with that sweet tone.........................

Mine's not built yet, but most of the parts are ordered. I'm looking at about $1700 by the time I'm done. Seems like an equivalent amp from Blockhead would be about $1000 more than that, so I think I'm ahead of the game.

Alex

Alot may have to do with how you want your amp. You can use 30.00 speaker to 225.00 speakers.. Some of us on our first amps, built alot of the things like cab etc..and used parts we had on hand. So we pieced them together for about 4 to 5 hundred total. Graydon offers kits..and suggest to get his chassis and plexi panels and Heyboer trannys. But he also builds the amps, if you wanted one built for you.Then if you want to build your own,many member have boards and cabs to about anything you need. So you may have to think on what you want to do, or how much you want to do.

Some of our members have very cool looking additions to there amps..
Richie

If you're building from new parts, and buying a ready-made and covered cab, the other guys have covered the cost range.

I'd only add that I'm a total cheapskate so my first 18Wer (almost done!) is costing about £150 ($250?). To do that, you need to use a suitable donor amp. The guys here are probably already bored with my stories of cheap WEM combos. A donor head would be a lot harder to find though...

GDS sells the complete kit with instructions for $820. A finished cabinet will cost $200-$300.

If you get a chassis, transformers and plexi panels from GDS and source all the parts you can save a few bucks but it takes time to figure it all out.

I got all the parts for a combo including the 12" speaker and cabinet for about $650 but I had significant shipping costs here to Japan. So all together it cost me about $1,000.

I suppose it would have been helpful had I broken down my approximate $1700! It's about $780 for the combo chassis kit, about $400 for the cabinet, and $500 for the two 12" speakers. Maybe that shows which parts you could get for less, if you felt so inclined.

I'm sure there will be another $100 somewhere, whether it's tubes or misc. hardware. Hope this helps -

Alex

I bulit a 18 watt head.
I had my chassis custom bent for 15 euros.
Hammond trannies ( ).
Homemade faceplate .
I already had a speaker cab.
Homemade head cab.
The total price can be estimated in 400/500 euros, but with many hours of work! Punching chassis is very hard, making a cab and tolexing it takes a lot of time...
If I had to build another 18 watt I would get chassis, trannies and faceplates from Graydon.

Bye!

Hi,

I built a 2x12" with celestion greenbacks and a Mojo Bluesbreaker cab for under $900US. I bought the chassis and transformers from Graydon. The stuff to build the board from Hoffman. All the components to go on the board from Mouser and Antique electronic supply and a local electronics store (not Radio Shack). The biggest expense for me was the cab and speakers. The working chassis cost me about $400 finished.

In the old Yahoo archive there was a parts list with suppliers. I haven't seen it here so I don't know where it is anymore. I used that and it's the least expensive way to go and still not have to fabricate anything.

BTW it's great project and sounds incredible.

I will try to post some pics and sound clips of mine this week.

Greg

I took the bare bones approach and it cost me 300 USD. I used an LCR aluminum chassis and graydon's heyboer trannys. all i built was the head. I sourced all the parts myself. I did not spend any $ on tools - I drilled the holes (not punched) and if you do this, i suggest using a drill press but yeah...$300 for the head version in an aluminum chassis.

I built a conversion of a hammond tone cabinet amp
I just build the circuit on this chassis it is not entirely correct
But the PI is there and I feed it two signals
I built for a bright channel (too bright )
and the normal channel I like to bridge them

I got the chassis on ebay with tubes for 19.00
I mounted it in the back of a peavey cabinet with two alnico heppners
Do I get the cheapscate award?
total cost about 250.00 its all organ surplus parts
I will be posting pics if anyone cares
maybe some sound samples

its ugly!! but It sounds amazing, but what do I know
I am a "newbie and I never have heard a real one.
I wanted to experiment on old Iron but I plan to build a more accurate version I plan to buy the parts soon..
but I have output transformers that I know will work
and I have piles of other parts around
I guess I am not as picky as folks on this list..

I haven't started my build yet, but nearly have all my parts (two deliveries are expected next week). My board (including components) was sourced from Ceriaitone (Nik) in Malaysia. I'm building my own cabinet (with help from my "carpenter" brother). Tolex, cloth, knobs, handle and most "cosmetic" items were sourced locally in Australia from the Marshall distributor (thanks to Bubba2). Other components have come from a variety of sources - Paul Ruby (mesh and footswitch), Mission Amps (JJ EL84's, 2meg pots, lamp assembly, 1/4" jacks and 6CA4/EZ81 rectifier), Resurrection Radio in Aust (ceramic tube sockets, CTS pots, 12ax7 tube, wire) and Evatco in Aust (hole punch, another 6CA4/EZ81 tube at only $19 USD). Also got my trannies from Graydon, Weber 1230 Ceramic speaker from WeberVST and chassis from Mike Brauer. A local trophy manufacturer is doing the plexi for me. I've probably missed a few things, however cost so far for parts (not including labour) is around $900-1,000 USD. I can't wait to get this amp together ...

Barry Marie

Just to confirm that I really am King of the Cheapskates around here for my next 18Wer - which is going to be a head - I just bought http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... 2545369790 for the cabinet. It was too cheap and my woodwork is so bad... I'll take it to Marshall to get retolexed in Royal Purple.

I sort of like the kudos of rescuing an old Marshall cab for the project, too. Of course, there's going to be a whole lot of emptiness in that particular head.