Should you build an amp kit?

Recently, I’ve been getting ads on my Instagram from a couple of very well-known and well-respected companies telling me about their amp kits, and more specifically, how easy they are to build. Having built more than a few amps, I started to think about what it would be like to be a beginner and have a big box of stuff show up. What would that project look like for most people? And more importantly, how feasible a project is it?

It’s important to keep in mind that these kits aren’t cheap. You can build a 5E3 for less than Fender sells their ‘57 Custom Deluxe, but with tax and shipping, you’re looking at about $1300 to get started with most complete kits. “Complete,” meaning it comes with all of the amp parts as well as the cabinet and speaker. So, it’s an investment even though it’s a kit. And you will also need some tools to do the job right.

You don’t want to find yourself in a situation where you’ve just built an amp, but you can’t properly test it. At very least, you should have a good multimeter that checks AC and DC voltage, resistance, continuity, and AC current. It’s much nicer to have a meter that also lets you check capacitors and DC current.

If you went to the trouble to add up the cost of all the parts in a kit, bought a la carte, it’s not nearly the price of the whole kit. So, for what are you paying extra?

Good kits come with good instructions. A lot of time goes into creating step-by-step instructions so a beginner can build a machine that can kill you without thinking twice. Oh yeah, and there’s that. Once you get to the testing stage, you will be looking directly into a little metal box with hundreds of volts running around inside. This is why the test equipment I mentioned above is so important.

Another good piece of equipment to have if you’re planning to build an amp is a variac. Sounds complicated, but it’s just a voltage regulator that goes between the amp and the wall. If you are doing high-level repairs, a variac comes in handy in lots of ways, but the main reason you should have one when building your first amp is because you might make a mistake. And it’s a lot less scary to find that mistake at 50 volts than 120 volts. We can talk about the highly interesting topic of variacs and what you can do with them another time. They’re like $50 on Amazon. Just get one.

So, in a lot of ways, kits are pretty cool, and if you’re actually ready to build an amp, go for it. But what grinds my gears about kits is how easy they make it look. As though building an amp is as simple a task as putting together a bookshelf from IKEA.

The reality is you will need to do a lot of soldering, and the quality of your soldering will determine whether or not the amp even turns on. So, “having soldered before” isn’t good enough. Your soldering needs to be excellent quality or you will spend the rest of your life trying to figure out why the amp doesn’t work.

You also need to understand how wires work, what length they need to be, and how to arrange them inside the chassis. The difference between a barely functioning amp and an amazing amp is usually a handful of details.

I know I keep talking about multimeters but knowing how to test an amp is a significant part of the whole build. You need to know where to test and how, and what to look for. Without the ability to do this, you’re basically blind. If the tubes are running too hot, you don’t know how hot or why. If the amp is way too quiet, you can’t check to see if you’ve used the correct components, or whether the components are really connected to each other. Fluke makes excellent multimeters. That’s what we use here.

And lastly, you need to know what the amp is supposed to sound like. Once you come to the end and the amp makes noise, you need to know if it’s the right noise. I’ve serviced kit amps for customers and found nothing wrong with them. They sounded exactly as they were meant to. The customer just didn’t know what it was supposed to sound like, but they would have preferred that it sounded different. And unfortunately, when someone says, “why doesn’t this amp make me sound like Neil Young?!” the only and correct answer is, “because you’re not Neil Young, but you did build a 5E3.” It’s a weird moment of congratulations and disappointment. Hard to describe.

So, in conclusion… If you must build an amp kit, do your homework. Know what you’re buying, and realize that solid skills beyond “instruction following” are absolutely required. If you’ve never soldered before, just stop. Buy some soldering equipment and practice.

A guitar amp—simple ones especially— aren’t the most complicated things in the world, but building one requires skills, preparation, and equipment. There are a lot of great kits out there from great companies, but you need to understand what you’re getting yourself into. And for god’s sake, start with a Champ. I just can’t with people who start with a Deluxe Reverb. Start with a Champ.