just wanted to let you know that i built my first amp this week.
stephen was quick to answer my emails and even quicker to ship it.
ive taken 2 nights to build the thing with the help of the great documentation that stephen ships with the kits and this forum an 18w.com of course, some pics of builds from other tone heads helped me a lot too as im a little electricaly challenged
i just came back from a local tech that helped me verify all my voltages and performed a global checkout of the amp(bout 40$ just to make sur all is really safe, 2 heads are sometimes better than one !)
even the guys next door(musical instrument store) came by to see what was that wonderful crunch, and we got to disturb them even more when one of the staff member(a friend of mine) asked me to try it in the store on an orange cab, it got a lot of attention in part beacause its not in a box yet but mainly beacause of the tone wich is unbelievable.
i even got compliments from the tech for my clean work underneat the surface(did take my time, im use to the mesure twice, then mesure again then maybe cut....
for those not sure about building one of these, id say try yourself at a stompbox kit from b.y.o.c or GGG, if you can make that, you can make an amp for sure, just follow directives and layout slowly and make double sure your connections are nice and clean, read as much as you can in the (little) wait for the kit to get to your door and get in touch with a local tech
before startup to help you check out if everything is good to go(safety first) you'll learn a lot in the process and you'll be hooked for good
damn, i so love cloning things this good !
edit, ill take some pics when i get back my camera or buy another one, in the meantime, ill try to build the head cab and a 2x12" vertical(bout the size of a marshall avt 4x12") all pine board finger-joined(except for baffles...marine ply for that)
who knows where to get piping in canada ? steamco ? i dont see it on their site !?!