Solid-State Amplifiers ~ Luthiery Laboratories

Solid-State Amplifiers

This is my favorite toy. 5 watts, battery-powered, or 9v, onboard distortion and delay. It's great for testing things on the bench. The big chrome Danelectro logo was missing from this burnt-out hulk, so I replaced it with "Craftsman".

Craftsman Amp Build

New 5-watt amplifier and Joyo delay pedal guts installed. I wanted a reverb, this gives that, and a whole lot more. The amp has built-in distortion. This thing does it all !!!

All controls and connections - a tight fit on this tiny chassis. Has 1/8" aux-in and headphone jacks. Since then, I added a second 1/4" input. Power jack on the left.

Electronics fit

Jensen speaker and battery pack - enough AAs to make 9 volts. It will also run off a regular 9-volt battery, or a wall wart.

Strap buttons on an amp? Why not? Battery-powered = portable !!!

Lots of room for picks, cords, extra batteries, power supply, even a tuner inside the storage compartment.

Amplifiers

Tube amps lend themselves more naturally to distortion than solid-state. When overdriven, tubes produce more of the nice-sounding even harmonics, while transistors produce more of the odd harmonics, which don't sound as good. Early solid-state amps distorted very un-musically. Bass is generally played clean and requires a good deal more power, which would require a very large, heavy, expensive, and delicate tube amp, so solid-state became a good alternative for bassists.

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Double-Acting Truss Rod

This is a spoke nut version, for use at the neck heel.

Here is a variation intended to adjust at the headstock rather than the heel, although it would work fine there too. I substituted a 1-1/2" 10-32 SS cap-head bolt for my usual spoke nut and threaded shaft. It is captured the same way, in a drilled-out coupling nut with a ground-down hex nut. The rod itself is 48" 3/16 rod steel, bent back on itself. Both coupling nuts are grooved on the attaching surface to hold the round rod. This greatly simplifies alignment and assembly, and the cap-head bolt eliminates one solder joint. All parts from my favorite luthiery supply shop, Home Depot.

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