When you’re looking to build an amp on a budget, one of the hardest pills to swallow is the cost of a suitable power transformer. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a cheap alternative you could pull from the scrap heap?
Like most things in life, I never want one of anything. One computer, one guitar, one motorcycle… No, I want that British chime. I want that pentodey grind. I want a Vox. So I built one!
Projects tend to grow. Evolve. Transform. Take on a life of their own. Some of them find bizarre ways of staying alive, or coming back to life after you think they’re long dead. Sometimes they start as one thing, become something else, and come around full circle to be what you started with in the first place. This is one of those “living” projects that just keeps on changing.
How It Started A few years back I took a Frontman 25 cabinet and chassis and turned it into a Vibro Champ. I messed around with it, modded it, got a nice Weber Alnico 10″, even added foldback reverb, but I was never happy with the way it sounded. Eventually I got fed up and decided to turn it into a Brown Princeton.