Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

I think I need to educate myself a little before dropping the kind of coin some of these amps are bringing in. I stopped by True Tone here in Santa Monica and they basically had everything from Supro Thunderbolts and Valco /Airline to vintage Gretsch and Fenders of every model, to boutique Victorias and Tone Kings - all at a premium price of course.

Other than the Tube Amp book, which I'm trying to hunt down locally, can anyone recommend a good book or website with info about tube guitar amps, including history, schematics, etc? I've got a backround in electronics, so I'm not afraid of the messy technical stuff.

I've never built a tube amp, but am considering that as well, though these days I seem to have more money than time, so It's not my first option.

I purchased my Deluxe Revised Edition of The Tube Amp Book from Overstock.com for $25 about a year ago. This was the best price I could find.

Kevin O'Conner has a series of 4 or 5 books that have everything from projects to build to modifying amps. These are available at Elderly and Antique Electronic Supply. Antique Electronics has quite a selection of books to buy.

There are a lot of books out there that can help you with amps. It all depends on what you're looking for.

For simple primers on what the amps were, what they looked like, etc, Ritchie Fliegler's book on amps is pretty good, I can't recall the exact name at the moment. Also, there are kind of biography books on Fender amps, Ampeg amps, Vox amps, Marshall amps, and these are all good too. Not much out there for more unknown or less popular stuff like Silvertone, Valco, Supro, Gibson, etc.

For more technical stuff more oriented towards building amps, from basic to more complex, you can try these:

Dan Torres - Inside Tube Amps
Dave Funk - Tube Amp Workbook
Gerald Weber's 2nd book
Gerald Weber's 1st book
Gerald Weber's 3rd book
Any of Gerald Weber's videos (you can find his books and videos at his site, http://www.kendrick-amplifiers.com/)

Kevin O' Connor - TUT3 (The Ultimate Tone vol. 3)
Kevin O' Connor - TUT1
Kevin O' Connor - TUT2
Kevin O' Connor - TUT5
The Jack Darr book on amps, can't recall the name but it is scanned and available online for free and is one of the best ever written for working on amps.
Any book by Norman Crowhurst, some of these are scanned and available online for free too.

Theres also lots of online bbs sites where you can learn a LOT. Here are some of those:

http://www.webervst.com/vstbbs/bbs.html
http://www.firebottle.com/fireforum/fireBB.cgi?cfg=gt&forum=pmgd&enter=go
http://www.18watt.com/
http://ax84.com/bbs/
http://www.hoffmanamps.com/Forum/yabb2/YaBB.pl
http://p210.ezboard.com/bampworkshop

Ted Weber, Mojo, Mission Amps, Doug Hoffman, and many others sell kits to build. Weber's are the cheapest in price with good quality. The others are more expensive and with better quality, with Mission Amps being some of the best around. If you search you can find their sites. Ted Weber has some of the best customer service you'll ever find anywhere so if you're thinking of building a kit, I would start with him. Hope that helps.

Greg,
Thanks for all the info ... looks like I've got my weekend cut out for me!