i wanna read about amp design, amp tweaking, what purpose the various components in a tube amp serve, how effects pedals work, how to build my own amp or preamp or etc etc etc.

what are the best books on the subject, the absolute "must have" books?

thank you

my recommendation is you get a book that covers ohms and kirchoffs laws, transistors, resistors, transformers, etc.
this is all basic electronics and there will be several in barnes and nobles/borders, probably under the title "basic electronics". The only real differences will be based on your learning style. But by learning basic electronics you'll be able to open up your amp/pedal/vibrator and know whats going on.


Chris

anything by Forrest Mims III is going to be good for the basics of electronics. once you figure out that stuff, check:

Electronics projects for Musicians - craig anderton

and if you're feeling sassy:

The Art of Electronics - Horowitz and Hill.

the A of E book is amazing, but more into the math and stuff. the Anderton book is pretty good with concepts without bogging you down with math.

i'm not very familiar with tube books. i'm sure someone else on this forum is though...

good luck.
-mikeC

Electronics books that are specific to audio are everywhere but good ones can be hard to find. If you can find it, the bible of all tube electronics books is the classic "Radiotron Designer's Handbook", which is an enormous book with more than you'll ever retain, but a great reference nevertheless.

My current favorite tube books are Morgan Jones' "Valve Amplifiers" and the newer "Building Valve Amplifiers". Although mostly tailored to HIFI amplifiers, preamplifiers, phono preamplifiers, power supplies, etc., many of the principles are the same when applied to instrument amplifiers. He covers Thévenin, a little Kirchoff, etc. This guy was a BBC engineer for years and knows an awful lot, and unlike so many other electronics "experts", he teaches simply and effectively without sounding like an arrogant fuckwad.

For books specifically about tube and hybrid instrument amplifiers, PA systems, etc. I would suggest Kevin O'Conner's books. Some of the first tube things I built were projects from the "Tonnes of Tone" book, including an 8 watt guitar amp, power supply, reverb unit, etc. There is some theory in there, but mostly it is analysis of existing designs (Fender amps, etc.) and ideas for improving them.

Good luck...

hey I'm also interested in this, but more towards the realm of Stompboxes, any suggestions that way?

tangent wrote:anything by Forrest Mims III is going to be good for the basics of electronics. once you figure out that stuff, check:

Electronics projects for Musicians - craig anderton

and if you're feeling sassy:

The Art of Electronics - Horowitz and Hill.

the A of E book is amazing, but more into the math and stuff. the Anderton book is pretty good with concepts without bogging you down with math.

i'm not very familiar with tube books. i'm sure someone else on this forum is though...

good luck.
-mikeC

I have both of these books as well.
The funny thing about A of E and really most electronics books is that they always start out by saying that they've omitted much of the math to keep it relatively straight forward. Then within 15 pages they're talking about matrices and shit I didn't understand when I was in math classes let alone now. Not a criticism on the books. Just saying that I'm a moron.


Electronic Projects for musicians is much more basic. It doesn't go into much depth, but gives practical and easy to follow instructions without a whole lot of theory.

A vs B wrote:hey I'm also interested in this, but more towards the realm of Stompboxes, any suggestions that way?

Anderton's book is all about making stompboxes, but it is also about 20+ years old. It even comes with a flexi-disc with the audio examples for each project, which I thnk might well be the last in print book to have that. Some of the projects use parts that are no longer readily available (I think the phaser is one of those), and most of the circuits can stand some improvement.

On the plus side, you can get kits for them - including PCBs, cases and mounting hardware - from Paia, which greatly aids in the assembly. I don't recommend etching your own PCBs just because it involves some pretty nasty chemicals, and it's an easy process to mess up. Buy the PCBs from Paia if you decide to do one of those projects. I'm sure there are other sites out there for DIY stompboxes - I found this one through Google:

http://surf.to/stompbox/

I'm not much of an expert, but a good friend of mine probably knows all there is to know about tube amps. He's always recomended the Kevin O'Connor and the Gerald Weber stuff.

I hope this helps...

Javier Ortiz



I can't get spell check to work on Safari...

In a previous post in this thread I mentioned the amazing "Radiotron Designers Handbook" as being one of the best texts on classic audio electronics.

Well, some insane diehard freak has scanned all 1498 pages of the book and made them into PDF files, organized by chapter.

Here it is.