A blog of my tube amp design and modification work. Primarily my own builds, but occasionally I feature work I've done on others' amps (with their permission.)

Sunday, January 13, 2013

Recommended Reading

It can be hard to find decent information which is specific to guitar amps. There are plenty of sites where you'll see advice like "You have a Bender QuintupleRec JCM ABC 3.14 Green? Change R14 to 1M, C2 to 1uF... (etc) - Instant Page/Hendrix/Young*!"

...but if you ask "why that component? why that value?" then your options are a lot more limited. Fortunately there are a number of online communities now, many of which feature People Who Actually Know What They're Doing - both people with electrical engineering degrees and other people who've been amp techs/builders for decades.

To that end, I've been updating the "links" list as I remember more sources I've used. If I had to pick one, hands down, it would be Merlin Blencowe's Preamp Book. The first edition is phenomenal and he just released a second edition that I want really badly. It's a perfect balance of technical and practical - possibly not the best for absolute beginners, but he's not afraid to simplify when appropriate.

Tubes have been obsolete technology for a while now (w.r.t. consumer electronics) so the classic books are old and focused on minimizing distortion - reproducing music, where you want the amp to stay out of the way, instead of producing music where the amp is part of the sound. They're also generally more technical than needed for guitar amps, but still a valuable resource for fundamentals. I'm still working through Amplifiers (The Why and How of Good Amplification), G. A. Briggs, 1952 which has been interesting and is well written with occasional dry jokes - it's not that nerds don't have a sense of humor, it's just that they generally have a bad sense of humor.

Somewhere in between are Richard Kuehnel's books - very technical, but very powerful tools. I have his power amp book, and if you're interested in understanding blocking distortion, this is the best treatment of the topic I've found. Some topics he goes into considerable depth, but others he doesn't write quite enough. Really math heavy, but that's a good thing. Great calculators on his site too.

Across the various boards the people are mixed, but generally if someone is way off someone else will step in. If you see Randall Aiken, Merlin, or RG Keen start talking, pay attention. My favorite forums are the AX84 BBS and Music Electronics Forum. The former is hard to search and the latter is frequently hacked so I usually search both through Google.

*Your choice: Angus, Neil, etc. I've never seen "instant La Monte Young"... oh man, that would be awesome.

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