Want to build my own equipment.

One thing to not be surprised about. If you use quality parts throughout you might find you wind up spending a lot more money than you intended to spend on your "DIY" project. Having said that you also might come up with an amplifier you might keep the rest of your life. I am having an electrical engineer build me a 4 chassis 300b SET amp with close to the best parts available (without going crazy on silver wired transformers). The final cost will be around 3000 for parts and labour. That is still less than the least expensive Audio Note 300B SET amplifier and mine will be a much better amplifier than the Audio Note.

Real cheap DIY means you get a cheap product; just like buying real cheap stuff at retail. Buy quality stuff for DIY and you might wind up with a better product than retail for a little less money. And you learn something in the process.

Dont let these people get you down. You can build gear for a fraction of the price if you have even basic knowledge and some good books on the subject.

You might not be able to build the best without the right test gear, but you can make Amps that will easily surpass Adcom, and you can build speakers that sound like speakers purchased for 2-3 times the cost.

Talk to other DIY'ers, It looks like a daunting task, but all in all it is not all that complicated to make a good loudspeaker or amplifier.

Remember, even the best audio engineers and loudspeaker designers started somewhere.

Almost every audio company started out as a DIY project in somone's garage.

Just set realistic goals, accomplish them, research more, set a higher goal, and continue so on and so forth.

I don’t know why you want to do that. If you enjoy building things, that is fine. But it is very difficult to build something that can better the high-end commercial products.

I was a DYIer in the 70s’ and 80s’ and I used to own an Audio Research SP6A preamp. In the good old days, the user manual of the preamp came with complete schematic and part list. So I built a few clones for my friends, each one was a little different and included what I considered “improvements”. But no matter what I did, none of the clones sounded as good as the original.

The reason was two words: measuring equipment. I had a cheap scope, a DIY signal generator, and a multi-meter. But in order to fine tune the amp, you need precision measuring equipment, which costs about the same as a complete high-end audio system.

You might have a look here http://www.passdiy.com/ and the pass labs forum here http://www.diyaudio.com/ to get some good ideas.

Sounds like you have the talent, skill and inspiration. Can't tell if you have the technical background / education. If you have that, then all you need is time, money and test equipment. Quality reference units would be a help too.

If you have never actually built a piece of equipment before, I highly recommend you start with kits, as others have said. You may even find that they give you all the satisfaction you are looking for.

Here's another source :

Bottlehead

Have a look here:http://www.diyaudio.com/

Look at tubes4audio.com or diytubes.com Both have kits and are a good starting place. I love my st-50 and st-80, which are quite musical and competitive with the big name amps I've had. Roy at tubes4audio can have a very nice top plate fabricated. It actually looks better than the photos on the website. A poplar or walnut box from welbornelabs.com makes for a professional, nice looking tube amp. Bottlehead.com for intro to preamps and single-ended amp. Good luck.

No problem, just have a lot of money laying around and you'll probably do just fine......It will likely cost 5-20 limes as much and take five times as long as you anticipate it will take and cost is the only problem.....If you are really tight then you will likely break even in a few years as set-up costs and layout/electrical design are expensive.....

Good Luck!

Bob Crump
CTC Builders

Check the net, Check the net, and once again check the net.

If you want to build amps, check out barns and nobel's online service.
I got some very good amplifier construction manuals from there, cant remember the name off the top of my dome tho.

Just go there and look for books on loudspeakers or amps, there are plenty that will give you some excellent knowledge.

It doesent really look difficult either.

Custom metal cases?
Once again i would just search the net. Look for any type of Metal Fabricators. Certain you will find something that will suit yer needs.
As far as "High end" goes, im not sure metal workers will understand what you mean by high end, but if you tell them what you want im sure they can fab it for ya, and im sure they can make it every bit as good as say, a jeff rowland amp chassis

As a subset of this thread, does anyone know any "high end" metal fabricators that might supply the industry or otherwise be available to make a chassis for a custom amp, preamp etc.

Good Evening!

I want to win a match with Tyson!...

It is a very deep pond you wish to jump into. Build it and they will come. Or you may end up with a lot of expensive boxes to deal with.