What is the upside?

[Mattster]

Currently I am working on my first scratch build project and as I progress, I can see I doubt I will be able to keep the budget to where it will be less than what I can buy a nice condition used really nice amp. So all said I am wondering what is the upside of scratch building an amp. I can buy amps that are used that need work and stay within a good margin in most cases. But starting fresh, buying the chassis, transformers, OPT's tube sockets, turrets, tubes, caps, resistors, chokes, and all the other little items needed, I can go out and buy a really nice pair of amps that hardly need any work on the used market. And then you have to take into account will the project sound as good. I am still going to go forward, but this might be the last of this kind of projects for me. I think I would be better off just buying an old used amp that has good iron and repurpose it.

So I am wondering what is the upside of building a new amp from scratch? Am I missing something?

You are not missing a thing. The closest I ever came to something like this was completely rebuilding my 500c fisher, aside from some heath kit stuff when I was younger. I have a bunch of hobbies and most of them involve building and/or fixing/restoring. I honestly believe with Audio, esp vintage audio, building, restoring and tweaking stuff is most of the fun, otherwise we would just go out and buy it new and at least to me it just wouldnt mean as much. And we dont stop learning which is probably the best benefit of all!

 

[zackthedog]

I've been lucky to make my living doing things I enjoy doing, but I've enjoyed few things as much in my life as I have building my own tube equipment. I'm never happier than with a hot soldering iron and a bunch of transformers, caps and resistors. ;-) I built single-ended amps for a long time because they were simpler. I didn't really get into push-pull until I read Dave G.'s threads about the various Williamsons, and I knew that I wanted to build my own. That entailed learning to use an oscilloscope, which was extremely gratifying.

Currently, I've about reached the end of my Williamson journey, with Heyboer's massive S-271-S's (I can never thank PakProtector enough for sending those old Peerless trannies to them). I'd boldly put these monoblocks and my homebrew Aikido preamp up against pieces costing 3 to 5 times as much. A friend of mine loves the Williamsons I built for him, even though he could afford something vastly more expensive, and drives them with a $30K preamp!

The fact is, there are SE and PP designs that you simply can't buy anymore at any price. For instance, PP 6B4Gs are a wonderful sound, but you'll have to build your own (unless you can find a boutique builder to make one for you). You can pick your components, go as cheap or as high-end as you like (we just upgraded my friend's amp with tantalum resistors, way too rich for my pocketbook!)--you can customize the size, the layout, just about everything. And despite the the increasingly high price of components, you're almost guaranteed to end up with something that will beat out an off-the-shelf piece costing far more.

I'm currently a bit blue because I had to tear down my whole "workshop." It was taking over the patio (we have no garage) and said patio desparately needs redoing--the retaining wall leaks, the crappy green "carpeting" is shot and the cement floor itself needs to be repaired and resurfaced (I'm thinking epoxy), and the whole structure needs a coat of paint. When that's done I'm thinking to have a custom work bench built in one corner, in a 50's style to match the house, something with cabinets that can be closed up and not look like a scrap heap. ;-)

 

[wparks]

For me it's about the intellectual journey. In restoring someone else's product, you are mostly stuck with their design choices (which in most commercial amplifiers are frequently a disappointing trade-off between quality and cost), and you can't often "get inside their head" to understand why certain choices were made. I like the challenge of doing your own scratch design work, being able to experiment with different topologies, and iterating that process as your understanding improves from build to build. It's an amazing journey, and is taking me places I would not have predicted in the beginning because your perspective changes so much as you learn. There is also just such a rich range of options depending upon budget and design preference- from rat-rod console dust-offs to @StepheK's really pretty all-new custom builds and everything else in between. My preference lately is cheaper good used vintage iron, cleaned and repainted and mounted on new chassis- best of old and new. If you do quality work, something hand-built as well as you can build it will always be more "valuable" than a factory made anything. In the end, it's really you that you are building.

 

[Mr Boochie]

Same here, like ALWAYS double check the polarity of electrolytic caps

The dim bulb current-limiter is your friend!

 

[gadget73]

Sometimes trying to figure out why an old design is what it is can be fun, and if you add in the challenge of trying to make it better without a complete gut and redesign its an interesting learning opportunity. Still may not pull off a miracle but low effort improvement can still be worth doing.

 

[Ken Boyd]

I feel lucky just getting things to work well as drawn, no plans in the near future to redesign circuits.

 

[Mr Boochie]

I feel lucky just getting things to work well as drawn, no plans in the near future to redesign circuits.

I, too, rely on the original engineers. If you don't, then you prolly should have bought another amp or whatever from the start.

As an analogy, Honda did build some good cars. There really isn't a need to completely rice them out with the latest groovy, hip-hop parts.