The starting point - Old Ironsides...

So I'm starting this journey (again) with an old amp I started building from spare parts, sometime in the late 1990's, until about the early 2000's. I'm pretty sure it was based on a vintage Fender Deluxe, although I wish I could remember which schematic version. I located a schematic in my copy of Aspen Pittman's excellent reference The Tube Amp Book, and started wiring it point to point from there.

Here's a picture of where I'm starting from:




The thing needs a name...I think Old Ironsides is nice. Here's a shot from the front panel, input jack on left, power switch on right. I don't remember what the 3 controls are for, I'll dig around and figure it out.



Another shot from the top. I used a little copper plate to enable me to mount the jacks for the 12AX7s.




From what I remember last working on it, I added the tubes, fired it up with the guitar plugged in, but got no sound. I think the rectifier did light up though, that's a good thing I think.

So now back to it.

Some the parts sources for this franken-amp:

Chassis and transformers: from Angela Instruments, from the mid to late 1990's, when they used to have a cool old catalog printed in newsprint, sort of retro-looking, lots of irreverant commentary. I bought this around the same time I bought a Sovtek Mig50 from them, not long after they came out. They were so cheap, I think I paid $200 or so for it new. It actually had a pretty good clean fender sound, good iron but parts were kind of crappy: loose knobs, etc.

Small parts: Antique Electronic Supply, also Mouser, and Radio Shack. Some new, some used...including some crazy surplus shit I found in the trash near the facilities department at LMU in the early to mid 1990's...they were throwing out all of these cool panels and things with banana jacks, and huge bags of electrolytic caps.