Building amps

Anyone have any amps they recommend I try building? I want to build an amp, solid state or tube, I don't hugely care, just something for me to do in my spare time. I know how to build a rectifier etc. I'm just a really practical person and love doing electronics when I can because its fun. I want to build a JTM45 but would rather just build something simple first not that a JTM45 is hugely complex I just haven't built an amp before

build a champ kit and fix some larger AB amps before going any further... as a guy who burnt a push-pull pot out just wiring an LP up I would suggest you try a pedal or two first as practice and see how that goes. Personally I have worked on repairing and restoring amps and I have built some fuzzes but I have yet to tackle even a champ from scratch. Apart from requiring a lot of knowledge and skill the process is also dangerous involving high voltage. If you plan to do it make sure that when you are ready to fire her up your children ARE NOT home but that your wife is so that someone can save you if you accidentally ground out an improperly built circuit with your body.

I swear I just pulled the shaft out, I might have burned one out though, proably did on my old iron that was ome cheapo chinese one. My current one is 25w (I thought it was 15 but the box says 25w) and I am yet to do a bad joint or damage a component with it. I still want to get a proper soldering station though. I'l take your advice with the champ kits and repair a few amps. from schematics and diagrams the JTM45 looks well within my skill level but that doesn't mean it is. I won't try it with the kids around, just not worth the risk. In theory the DC voltages shouldn't be deadly as the resistance of skin is too high, providing the current isn't too high. AC may kill you though

nah, the JTM45 is past BOTH of our skill levels, tube electronics are more complicated than discrete transistors which in turn are a lot trickier than ICs and passive guitar electronics. There's a lot to this, respect it and take one step at a time. Buy a good, Fluke multimeter and a decent weller iron, build a cathode biased single ended amp like the champ and get the basics, then try a tweed deluxe before getting into fixed bias push pull circuits with complex tone networks like the JTM45.

Also, you may not like the 45, its loud and pretty darnned clean (although its a nice, round clean sound, not like a Twin Reverb loud and clean, dirtier than that, but not dirty by modern standards) and its more of a growler than a cruncher. The 50 watt 'black flag' plexi circuit may be more to your liking. The 45 has a slightly hotter preamp than a tweed bassman and the 50 watt plexi with split cathodes in the pre is hotter still though its got considerably more output. Bridging the channels on a 50 watt is also more interesting as the channels are a lot different in voicing and gain structure versus the bassman/jtm45 where the only difference is the bright cap. In tweed-based circuits over 15 watts I am more of a tweed super/pro/bandmaster guy (these are all the same basic amp with different output impedances) and in Marshalls I am really partial to the 50 watt plexis, JMPs and 800s although the extra power from a superlead is fun if you can use it.

If I were going to build a JTM45 for modern use I would make it a "JTM25" using a pair of 6V6es run really hard with huge deluxe reverb plate voltages and then I would have the circuit rectified by a 5V4 or EZ81 rectifier to introduce a little sag at 10 that the GZ34 would not be likely to give when powering a mere 25 watts. I would also add a post-phase inverter master volume using a dual-ganged pot strapped to the outputs of the 2 sides of the long-tailed pair. I would also dump the 1st 12ax7 in favor of a small pentode like the EF86 or 5879 to get more gain, compression and bandwidth right out front and then add a bright switch so you could revoice the input to be normal or bright depending on what guitar you are using since blending channels on a bluesbreaker is lame and underwhelming. But you would want to build AND play more tube amps before coming up with your own ideas.

Where would you get amp kits? I've never seen any, maybe I should look a bit harder.

Tubedepot, Build Your Own Custom etc

Ceriatone (a good way to break in as you can buy partially assembled kits and finish them to get comfortable and they offer a BAZILLION circuits and variations), Weber speakers (the original amp kits), Mojo, Marsh, Triode Electronics, BYOC does a few amps and not just pedals now (my buddy built the tweed royale and its pretty cool because it can go from single-ended tweed princeton to 5E3 deluxe, the tone control is defeatable so it can also be a champ w/1 control AND you can kick the negative feedback n and out to voice the power amp like different champ and deluxe incarnations... neat kit, good quality, great instructions)... and of course the crème dela crème for tweed fender kits is Mission Amps