I spent this entire weekend assembling my 5F1 Champ, a Mojo kit
purchased from Tube Depot. Why so long? Well, lack of experience, poor
work space, and a lot of time pondering how to ground things and
connect them, not to mention redoing some soldering after I
undertood how to use the fiber board.

The quality of the kit is very high. The tweed work on the cabinet was
perfect. The tweed diagonals on the back panel actually lined up
exactly with the box! And the chasis is all stainless steel! The
quality of the components is first rate, and they packaged well. The
whole kit survived the trip to San Diego without any damage at all.

So how does it sound? I love it! I would describe the tone as
bell-like. It's fun just to arpeggiate one chord and listen to it.
Many moons ago I had several tube amps, the best one by far being a 50W
Marshall. I usually did not overdrive it. I simply played it clean, and
never with any effects which to me just tart up the sound. I haven't
tried overdriving the Champ yet. However, I'm not expecting to sound
like Leslie West. My wife also liked the sound of this amp. It was
interesting that she asked me to A/B with an 8" transistor MGC15
"Marshall" which is my only other amp at this time. Verdict? Where the
Champ had chime, the "Marshall" sounded like cardboard regardless of
how much you mess around with its numerous knobs.

There is some hum. However, it is not too objectionable.

Problems?

There were some very minor errors in the delivered BOM. For instance,
instead of two orange .02 uF coupling caps, I received one honking
orange 0.22 uF cap. For the other coupling cap I used the .047 uF
"death cap" which is part of the BOM. I put the larger one further
upstream.

The other thing is that they require you to drill two holes in the top
of the box in order to hang the chasis. I measured, centered, and
drilled these holes very carefully and quite plumb I might add using a
gun drill with a level on it. Unfortunately, I did not take into
account that the back panel is recessed. This means that the chassis,
after using up its slot adjustment sticks out 1/8" The holes need to
be redrilled about 1/4" to 3/8" further in. C'est la vie!

Was it worth it? Yes!

Joe

Joseph Meditz wrote:
I spent this entire weekend assembling my 5F1 Champ, a Mojo kit
purchased from Tube Depot.


Was it worth it? Yes!

Joe



Very Cool!!! Congrats! I just bought a mess of tubes from Chris @ Tube
Depot for my monster bass head (got 8 matched Sovtek KT88 and a couple
pre tubes). Great guy to deal with, IMHO/E.

I'm looking at the little 8 watt per side stereo kit to power a pair of
bookshelf speakers for my main computer workstation.

http://www.tubedepot.com/diy-k12m.html