Members unclean hands Posted April 14, 2006 Members Share Posted April 14, 2006 What kind of college program should I pursue if I wanted to make a career of building tube guitar amps? I was thinking electronics engineering but I'm not 100% sure. Please help!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Duesentrieb Posted April 14, 2006 Members Share Posted April 14, 2006 Economy: Marketing & Sales Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members unclean hands Posted April 14, 2006 Author Members Share Posted April 14, 2006 Yeah no kidding, but hat about the building part:D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members poida Posted April 14, 2006 Members Share Posted April 14, 2006 Bachelor or Duck Tape Application. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members cib11mike Posted April 14, 2006 Members Share Posted April 14, 2006 Originally posted by unclean hands What kind of college program should I pursue if I wanted to make a career of building tube guitar amps? I was thinking electronics engineering but I'm not 100% sure. Please help!! An EE would be ideal but not nessasary. An education in basic electronics would be fine. It's likely you will never see a tube during your education, so you will have to learn it on the side anyway. Your going to need a job to pay the bills until you can support yourself, if ever, building amps, in which case the EE would be your best bet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members unclean hands Posted April 14, 2006 Author Members Share Posted April 14, 2006 Originally posted by cib11mike An EE would be ideal but not nessasary. An education in basic electronics would be fine. It's likely you will never see a tube during your education, so you will have to learn it on the side anyway. Your going to need a job to pay the bills until you can support yourself, if ever, building amps, in which case the EE would be your best bet. Yeah I told the people at work of my idea and one suggested an apprenticeship but now many amp builders in my area if any. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members supercow3 Posted April 14, 2006 Members Share Posted April 14, 2006 E&E is definitely a must for amp building:) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Jarick Posted April 14, 2006 Members Share Posted April 14, 2006 Yep, Electrical Engineering. My dad got a 2-year in that field and he's an engineer. He's "underqualified" for his job, but he's IMMENSELY talented. The guy can build anything. When I was looking at building an amp a few years back, I read up on it a bit, and he could explain to me what every little thing inside the amp did. Really cool. BUT, I think that your ideas and talents for amp design are more important than your education. How's your ear for tone? What kind of designs do you want to go for? Have you thought about the aesthetics or parts? Kind of like music. You can go to school for it, but you won't make it without the talent. Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members unclean hands Posted April 14, 2006 Author Members Share Posted April 14, 2006 Originally posted by Jarick Yep, Electrical Engineering. My dad got a 2-year in that field and he's an engineer. He's "underqualified" for his job, but he's IMMENSELY talented. The guy can build anything. When I was looking at building an amp a few years back, I read up on it a bit, and he could explain to me what every little thing inside the amp did. Really cool. BUT, I think that your ideas and talents for amp design are more important than your education. How's your ear for tone? What kind of designs do you want to go for? Have you thought about the aesthetics or parts? Kind of like music. You can go to school for it, but you won't make it without the talent. Good luck! Ok this is my idea of good tone. Cleans AC30 crunch/mid gain Jcm 800 Distortion Mark4 for example. But that is almost impossible to build an amp with all three. I want to build a classy looking amps not chromed out with a strobe light. I would like to offer midi since a lot of guitarists use effects and its less things to switch if you use rack effects. As for parts I want to get realitively high quality components, not NOS tubes and such but not stuff that I will have to repair later because that {censored} is breaking down. I also don't want to get overcomplicated, the mark4 for instance is intimidating took me an entire minute to figure out where the hell was going on with that amp. But over all what I want to produce is a modern gained amp with an exceptional clean channel not just its usable and of course master volume. Or a really exceptional single channel amp with lots of bells and whistles. Prescance, Depth, reverb, footswitchable gain and if all goes well a mid emphesis knob. Since JerryP is a very respected member of this forum and I build it if he would do me the honor of giving the prototype an examination, I would take care of any matters he thought noteworthy before I make them available for purchase. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JamesPeters Posted April 14, 2006 Members Share Posted April 14, 2006 My advice is to do something that actually makes money instead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members GuitArtMan Posted April 14, 2006 Members Share Posted April 14, 2006 Originally posted by cib11mike An EE would be ideal but not nessasary. An education in basic electronics would be fine. It's likely you will never see a tube during your education, so you will have to learn it on the side anyway. Your going to need a job to pay the bills until you can support yourself, if ever, building amps, in which case the EE would be your best bet. Yep. I studied electronics 20+ years ago and never saw a tube in school. We did have this old guy who used to work at Bell Labs like in the 40s or 50s and he had some old tube info lying around, but it was not part of the curiculum. A good place to learn about tubes is from the Ham radio dudes, but it's gotta be the older ones as the youngin's are going solid state. I bet over half of the amp builders out there don't have any more than a few basic electronics courses from the local JC under their belt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members unclean hands Posted April 14, 2006 Author Members Share Posted April 14, 2006 Originally posted by JamesPeters My advice is to do something that actually makes money instead. Such as? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members JamesPeters Posted April 14, 2006 Members Share Posted April 14, 2006 Originally posted by unclean hands Such as? Just about anything else. Don't get into this because you think it's going to be a good financial opportunity. There is that possibility but you'd be giving yourself unrealistic expectations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Alchemist Posted April 14, 2006 Members Share Posted April 14, 2006 Get an EE degree for building the amps. Then get a business degree and hope you can use it to actualy make money with those amps:p Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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