Amp Camp Project

About me
I am 65, married with four grown up kids. I was building tube amps before ten years of age. Audio, Hi Fi and Commercial sound has been a lifelong passion. I have built tube amps from the RCA handbook, Dynaco kits and many, many Heathkits. I love listening to rock, worship music and baroque too! I am a consummate builder.

I never wanted to spend a fortune on a Class A Amplifier. Building a kit like Amp Camp really appealed to me. So I bought the PCB's, Heatsinks and ordered all of the parts. I used a huge 15,000 mfd cap to block DC from the speaker. Overkill, I know, but I wanted to do it. I used the IRF 710 Mosfet Power transistor. I own a ton of them and I wanted to use them up. I added the led and drop resistor on the pcb. Never probe around when the power is on. When I powered both units up there was no smoke or problems. I took my time to do the bias adjustments. So exciting to build and have everything work. I run this from a preamp with a volume control. I have speaker leads with banana plugs installed. Note, this design is very noise free. After turning it on it gets hot. After 30 minutes I can only place my hand on the heat sinks for about 5 seconds, then the hands quickly fly off. I do have a large computer server fan that I can run and eliminate the excess heat. No switches, no knobs just a simple design approach. I do plug the laptop power supplies into a power strip with a switch. My design had a twist. I wanted to have an amp that looked like I walked into a retail store and bought it. I found a retired cabinet maker and he took the four pieces of wood I gave him and made my cabinet / frame. The rounded edges were done by multiple passed with a hand held router. I am very well pleased with the case. This has been one of my most memorable projects. PS My buddy is a musician. He hears and understands the colors and tones of individual instruments. He was blown away when I played it through a pair of AR-3 speakers. Nelson Pass, I am very grateful for this project.