Im getting into building amps. Advice?

[t0thesun]

I'm trying to gather all that I'll need to hack away at my first attempt. Does anyone on here have any advice for someone getting into builds? Maybe supplies I won't know I'll need until shit goes terribly wrong?

[ShaolinLambKiller]

Do you know a lot about electronics? or can read a schematic? Maybe you want to try out one of those kits where you just do a little 5watt to start with till you know what you are doing. Don't take this the wrong way but usually when someone decides to take on something like this they already have gathered a large and fair amount of knowledge of what they are going to undertake.

[whiskey_face]

start with pedals move to a tube driven reverb then tackle an amp.. . . that's what I would do.

[morange]

Don't electrocute yourself; high voltage, you know. Also, capacitors hold charge, so you have to discharge them before you work inside an amp. Easy to do, though.

[wildebelor]

whiskey is right!
Actually everyone is right!

[new05002]

Buy a kit amp like a Weber kit or AX84 or ect.

Valve Wizard's site is a good place to begin to learn about stuff.

[skullservant]

Yep, I'd start with a kit first. I've been building pedals for a few years, but only built my first amp not quite a year ago. It's definitely different than building pedals!

[terminator]

Wear rubber shoes?

[skullservant]

A few years ago when I was just getting into building I thought it would be an awesome idea to mod one of my small tube combo amps and put a new transformer in it. I forgot to heatshrink one of the wires and picked the amp up for whatever reason by the chassis and shocked the shit out of myself to the point where I dropped the amp back down on the cab I was running it into. Lesson learned! Glad I'm still alive!

[t0thesun]

Thanks guys!
To answer your question I'm actually an electronics technician by trade so discharging caps and properly grounding as well as reading schematics isn't really a big deal.
I probably will try out one if those kits.