Anytime I think about buying something I usually ask myself, "can I make that." Sometimes I might not save much money but it doesn't matter. If I get it in my head that I can make it then it will get done. It is just the satisfaction of saying that I made that. So I currently have a Fender super champ XD and I'm not 100% satisfied with the sound. After doing research for a new amp, I decided on the Fender Deluxe reverb blackface (FDR) model. Well buying a vintage FDR will set you back a couple grand easily. Of course you could buy the reissue but it has a printed circuit board and the resistors aren't carbon composition, and lots of other things that don't compare to the original. So of course I decided to make my own from scratch (no kit). I intend to chronicle the build on here. There are lots of schematics and pictures on the internet but I haven't been able to find step by step build instructions.
1. First step - the chassis
My goal was to make this as "green" as possibly and I had planned to use an old aluminum road sign for the chassis but when I had it bent it just broke at the bend. The guy said it was high strength aluminum (6061 T6 or equivalent) and would have to be bent in a large radius. So plan B was to have him bend me a chassis out of some scrap steel laying around. He made the two bends and wasn't even going to charge me so I gave him $20. After drilling probably 60% of the holes as seen above I decided to just buy a chassis. Drilling through steel with a drill and trying to be accurate isn't the easiest thing to do. I got burnt out and was tired of wasting time on the chassis and just decided to buy one which you will see in the rest of the blog.
Here is the new Chassis- much better
I have inserted all of the basic parts based on the layout below. This is a layout from Weber amps which sells a kit that is basically the same thing as the deluxe reverb. They have two bright switches shown but my chassis doesn't have the cutouts and I'm not installing them. As far as I can tell everything else is the same.
Notice the orientation of the power tube socket (red tab and pin numbers).
Here is a nice ground scheme diagram that I found at Bert ten Hove's site (thanks). There are many different grounding schemes that you can use such as a star scheme, buss bar (as shown above), and using the chassis to name a few. I decided on the buss bar scheme based on the ease of hookup, cleanness, and low noise/hum expected.
