iTube things of amp things...

So, as usual for this fall, brother glop has sparked an interest in learning about but not necessarily totally understanding nor even actually building a tube amp kit. The affordable & popular kits & service by www.tedweber.com seem to be the way to go for kits. I've emailed asking a few questions & have gotten back quick replies. I even inquired about a generic or somewhat generic solution to adding an effects loop to existing kits. He replied stating he's been giving that much thought. The thing about weber kits is that you get parts & a schematic. That's it. Other more expensive kit providers provide instructions & such. For this me, staring at a pile 'o parts & a schematic would not be the ideal way to learn. And if you read some of the stuff on the kit building forum or look at pics of amp kit builds in progress it looks rather daunting. Then through the complexitiy & nature of the do it yourself kits you have to become a tinkerer & make decsisions about how & where to place things or cope with things and troubleshoot things like hums & buzz & such. I guess that is part of the core hobby of it.

Why my interest? Well I'm intrigued by a kit that clones, or tries to anyway, Marshall's original amp or head which was the JTM 45. VH-1 has this documentary series going on & they had one on Hendrix. I watched it when it was first on but didn't notice that which I noticed last night when I watched through it again from a 2nd recording that my DVR happily did for me. I realized in the concert footage that there stood proudly JTM 45 heads. Yeterday I drooled over that amp building seminar thing & how it takes a Mojo JTM 45 kit such & turns it into the Marshall JCM 800 "on steroids" as one reviewer called it. Halen used the JCM 800 in 80's tour such as 5150 tour & such. So that's a JTM45 45 watt amp instead of a horridly loud for home 100 watt thing. Then stick a Weber MASS Lite attenuator on the 45 watt thing makes a vintage great amp tolerable at home listening levels. I would definitely desire the hot rodded JTM 45 but that would have to come with time, practice, & asking myriads of questions.

I found some cool clips of the Weber JTM 45 at:
http://www.leftee.net/Leftee_Gain.mp3
http://www.leftee.net/Villanova.mp3
http://www.leftee.net/WindCries.mp3

So I thought welp, I know nothing about circuits or understanding them. I can solder simple things together. So I began looking about for simpler kit things that help teach the novice about stuff... Found a couple of good resources so far...
http://members.tripod.com/~gabevee/papers.html
http://www.ax84.com/?pg=associateprojects

Just to read some stuff is interesting in itself. Will I actually try a kit any time soon? Probably not as the simplest & smallest kits start at like two hundred something dollars. I've got mouths to feed & such. laff. I think I would enjoy becomming kit builder, for simple amps & heads, for others where they buy the Weber kit & I put it together for them at a going rate builder price...whatever hundred or few that may be. First that requires my learning stuff & understanding it. But it also requires someone wanting to pay for the kit amp & then pay additional for someone to build it. I'm sure it happens occasionally but not very often. Purple Sound Makers R Us. laff.

Until later comes turn it up to wires, & connectors, & chassis, & transformers, oh my...