[Amps] I have unbuilt SB-220 complete anyone interested?

[DAVE WHITE]

Well I must say that I echo your thoughts.  I bought an SB220 for GBP250 some years ago.  It's currently in use by a pal of mine (Lee G0DBE) who keeps the tubes nice and hard and stops the electrolytics drying out.  

The amp must have been owned by someone who smoked those Gitanes or Gauloises cigarettes 10 at a time (six in the mouth and two in each nostril?).  I thought that the amp was supposed to be gold anodised inside and that the tank coils were just copper - but polishing eventually brought them up as silver!  Every component was just .... brown.  Brown bands on brown resistors, brown lettering on brown capacitors, wires in differing shades of - you guessed it - brown. Every time the amp was switched on it produced a smell like a French cafe so full of smoke that you couldn't see more than three feet.  I could almost taste the coffee, croissants and pains au chocolat.....but it worked, and had continued to work since it was built in the late 60s.  1200 watts and probably 1200 milligrams of nicotine output.  A truly great design and components that stood the test of time.  A plain vanilla SB220, no mods, no new components.  But a rather unique smell.

However - would I pay $1000 for one?  Absolutely not.  They're a great amp, but these days ancient and overpriced in my opinion.

Using hamfest fleamarkets as a component source, supplemented by scrounging at a local fabrication shop for the aluminium to build the chassis, my current 3CX3000A7 Pi-L amp cost me around $500 to build including a second-hand tube. I've seen good TL922s going for GBP500 here (about $700 these days) and other excellent amps (Linear Amp UK etc) going for less.  Heathkits weren't so popular here as they were in the US.  We only see them once in a while, whereas every American hamfest I've been to I could have bought a good SB220.

But supposing that amp goes for $1000.  I don't know how long it would take to assemble really carefully and really nicely.  Maybe 100 hours?  You end up with an amp worth $600 and you've paid just $4 an hour for the entertainment and the pleasure of building an icon of the 1960s. Maybe you wanted to relive that.  Maybe you wanted to experience it for the first time.  Maybe you just wanted to build an amp for the first time and no-one makes kits any more.  Plus you know that no-one's mistuned it, dropped it, poured beer in it or farted around with the circuitry.  It's your amp and you built it.  

Now I think about it, I really can see how that might appeal.  Maybe someone in China might see the market niche and start remanufacturing.  

cheers

Dave G0OIL


--- On Sun, 15/2/09, chas <chasm at texas.net> wrote:
From: chas <chasm at texas.net>
Subject: Re: [Amps] I have unbuilt SB-220 complete anyone interested?
To: "Amps Amps" <amps at contesting.com>
Date: Sunday, 15 February, 2009, 8:16 PM

KB0NLY wrote:
> Your Welcome!
> 
> Scott
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Van K7VS" <wa7fab at cdsnet.net>
> To: "KB0NLY" <kb0nly at mchsi.com>
> Sent: Sunday, February 15, 2009 8:38 AM
> Subject: Re: [Amps] I have unbuilt SB-220 complete anyone interested?
> thanks, that did it.  Have a nice day.  Van



now, assuming this unbuilt ebay kit makes it to $1,000 in the next 3 
hours, how much is a complete set of mods from Harbach, Measures, etc???
In fact, this "number" is why I have not opted to buy and rebuild a 
"used" set already.  I am guessing that it would cost about $600 with

new caps, tubes, transformer etc.

point is, I could likely buy a Henry or an Alpha for what a modded and 
updated 220 would cost.  I am so glad that i have my SB-220 with the 
Dahl transformer, etc but am not sure that I would spend what it would 
cost TODAY to do it again..


hmmmm?


-- 
chasm at texas.net   k5dam  Houston, TX

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other 
people's money.
   -  Margaret Thatcher
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