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It popped in my head the other day and I looked around online, but I've yet to find a single person who advertises they build ss amps. There are tons and tons of custom tube amp builders, but nothing for ss stuff. It'd be a fucking dream to find someone to build me some kind of crazy traynor frankenstein of some sort.

Anyone heard of someone doing this kind of stuff?

Quilter...not really custom though

But there probably are some dudes out there...I think most people would just buy a solid state power amp or something and use a preamp...much easier, cheaper, and can be fixed/replaced. Have seen some people take old solid state stereos and turn those into guitar amps too.

Guys like soaring tort and analog outfitters could probably do something with found parts...

Look into amps that pedal steel players use, Evans, Webb, Tc Furlong..

I'm aware of the preamp pedal + power amp thing. Sure it's functional, but it's not fun! I'd rather have a full blown amp head.

Analog outfitters seems interesting, but from what I can tell they mostly do low watt stuff. I doubt they'd do something like 200w of ss.

The simple answer is tube amps are easier to build and more lucrative. There is way more information about tube amp building, and raw parts (i.e transformers, tube sockets, chassis, ets.) available to the consumer now than even in the heyday of tube amps. Try and find someone to custom wind a power transformer for an SS amp.

I can't speak for all builders but it would take me just as much time to custom build and SS amp as a tube amp. Yet, by and large, most people would expect to pay considerably less for an SS amp than a tube amp when the actual cost difference to the builder would just be the difference in the sums of the parts of each amp.

Power is another issue. You say you would like a 200W SS amp. What you really want is a 400W SS amp, because turning an SS amp up much past half way starts to introduce distortion, and not the cool, fat,round, juicy, glorious, harmonically rich distortion a tube amp makes, just ear fatiguing jaggedness like the hitting your head of the corner of a table or falling off your skate board into someones rock garden.

Don't get me wrong, I love all amps tube or SS. I count several SS amps in my collection including; a Thomas Organ Vox Viscount, a 1962 Kay 707 Galaxy (30W, two channels with tremolo, each channel with it's own trem depth control, one 12" speaker, ugly), a Kustom 150 with one 15" speaker, a Polytone Mini Brute, a Kustom 100 4-channel PA with charcoal tuck and roll and two 4x8" speaker columns which I use out with the band all the time in the little dives we play. and I had an Acoustic 150 head which was a great sounding amp. This leads me to another point. There are a lot of cool old SS amps out there to be had, so people interested in SS gear just find what they need (usually cheap) in the used market, not from custom builders.

SoaringTortoise wrote:The simple answer is tube amps are easier to build and more lucrative. There is way more information about tube amp building, and raw parts (i.e transformers, tube sockets, chassis, ets.) available to the consumer now than even in the heyday of tube amps. Try and find someone to custom wind a power transformer for an SS amp.

I can't speak for all builders but it would take me just as much time to custom build and SS amp as a tube amp. Yet, by and large, most people would expect to pay considerably less for an SS amp than a tube amp when the actual cost difference to the builder would just be the difference in the sums of the parts of each amp.

Power is another issue. You say you would like a 200W SS amp. What you really want is a 400W SS amp, because turning an SS amp up much past half way starts to introduce distortion, and not the cool, fat,round, juicy, glorious, harmonically rich distortion a tube amp makes, just ear fatiguing jaggedness like the hitting your head of the corner of a table or falling off your skate board into someones rock garden.

Don't get me wrong, I love all amps tube or SS. I count several SS amps in my collection including; a Thomas Organ Vox Viscount, a 1962 Kay 707 Galaxy (30W, two channels with tremolo, each channel with it's own trem depth control, one 12" speaker, ugly), a Kustom 150 with one 15" speaker, a Polytone Mini Brute, a Kustom 100 4-channel PA with charcoal tuck and roll and two 4x8" speaker columns which I use out with the band all the time in the little dives we play. and I had an Acoustic 150 head which was a great sounding amp. This leads me to another point. There are a lot of cool old SS amps out there to be had, so people interested in SS gear just find what they need (usually cheap) in the used market, not from custom builders.

True. Never really thought about how abundant tube stuff is these days.

I've got a lab series L11 head.

It is loud as shit (easily keeps up with a jcm800) has a nice overdrive, sounds great with pedals. But the caps are dying and the ICs aren't made anymore if they should go.

I would kill for a new production SS head like the L11. Or something that built upon it.

Came in to say what Soaring Tortoise said. Realistically, I would have a harder time building a solid state head than a tube head (personally), and it would be worth half as much when I am done. It is a bummer that old Traynors and Sunns and such are so overpriced these days, I guess they are still affordable comparatively, but I do miss the glory days of outfitting a doom metal band with $100-200 amps.

ancientbones wrote:I'm aware of the preamp pedal + power amp thing. Sure it's functional, but it's not fun! I'd rather have a full blown amp head.

Analog outfitters seems interesting, but from what I can tell they mostly do low watt stuff. I doubt they'd do something like 200w of ss.

The Quilter Tone Block is a 200 watt, 4 pound solid state head. I think a couple of their amps are 200 watts. I have the Mini 101 which is 50 watts and it's not as loud as my 45-watt tube amp head but it can keep up in my band (against a Twin and a Super Bassman 100) just fine.

SoaringTortoise wrote:The simple answer is tube amps are easier to build and more lucrative. There is way more information about tube amp building, and raw parts (i.e transformers, tube sockets, chassis, ets.) available to the consumer now than even in the heyday of tube amps. Try and find someone to custom wind a power transformer for an SS amp.

I know a place.




Here because very curious
love solid state amps
maybe because they don't break as much no need to build more,.....

snagged another crate powerblock today so my SS game is on point yo

There's also more money and less time involved in making pre amp or custom pre amp pedals. Traynor sound is the Rusty Box, tons of Orange and Marshall style pre's. Medium to huge market. Where Orange's solid state amp head sounded great, but didn't sell at the store I used to work at unless they were used and less expensive.

hbombgraphics wrote:snagged another crate powerblock today so my SS game is on point yo

I miss the Crate GT120HL I had... Smallish 120 watt amp they did post-Shockwave, looked like a mini Shockwave. Great OD and high gain channels.

Really want to try one of the Ampeg SVT micro 200 watters. Think that would make a cool up-powered powerblock-sized pedal platform amp head.

This thread has made me nostalgic for my old Peavey Mark VI. Not that I want to but heads with Soaring Tort here, but I kinda do disagree with his statement that SS amp distortion is bad or necessarily worse than tube distortion. It's just a different kind. Yes, it's a more abrasive distortion, and not as smooth and pleasing as tube amp distortion. But sometimes abrasive and jagged is good. I used to love the sound of the Peavey when I was pushing it too hard. The super lightweight class D power amps nowadays are just too goddamned clean, I miss the old grating sound from the big iron SS amps.

But he's totally right that the market just isn't there right now for small batch SS work. We are basically in a new golden age of tube amps. That's just what everyone seems to want right now and resale values on SS amps is pretty crappy unless it's one of the older "mojo" brands like Sunn or Traynor.

The thing I think also is most of the folks who want solid state stuff have their needs met already; the pedal steel guys have Quilter, Peavey, etc, the metalheads have the poweramp/pre combos, etc.

Truth is that good solid state amps *new* aren't cheap.

How many of you are going to pony up the $600 for a new Jazz Chorus 40?

And that's big non-boutique pricing and scale.

I love my Jazz Chorus, but even there I'm scratching my head because I can get a very nice JC120 used all day long for that and just not care.

oh man, Pearce G1 = SS <3

I don't know of any "custom SS amp guys". But there is a wider range of sub megalithic manufacturers of
SS amps in the jazz world.

Like....

Mambo amps:


Henriksen:


Evans:


And then there is Quilter (Aviator and MicroPro and the 101 and Tone Block).

But none of that is "custom".

Jazz amps might be relevant for those whose effects span more than just the
standard "guitar frequencies". If you want your pedals to pump out their full
range of mayhem you can either send your subs to a bass amp, or you can try
out a high powered jazz amp.

Anyone glitched or pitched with a tweeter? Eardrums wouldn't stand a chance.