5E3 Amp Kit Question

greypilgrim76

greypilgrim76

Active member
So now that I've got plenty of pedals under my belt and I'm elbow-deep in my first guitar kit, I figured why not look for something else to put in my workbench-prep pile. After exploring my options, I've decided that an amp kit is the way to go, and I think I've settled on a 5E3 Fender Tweed Deluxe kit.

I've looked around to see who sells the best kits, and at first I thought I'd go with Weber, since they were a bit cheaper, but their components seem on the cheaper side and I think I'd end up swapping a lot of them out, which I'm not sure I want to mess with on my first build. The other two I'm looking at are Mojotone and Amplified Parts. It looks to me like they both have quality components (though I can't tell for sure on everything, partially because they're not identified and partially because I don't know which parts are quality for some components I'm not familiar with), and their prices for the kit and cab are within seven dollars of each other with shipping. I'm going to get a Weber 12A125A speaker for it, so I'll be ordering that separately.

Any of y'all have any experience with kits from either of these two vendors? Any sense of parts or overall quality being better with one than the other? Any other general tips or advice on going down this road?

Thanks for any advice!
 
I've built a Mojotone and AP amp kit (though not the 5E3). I don't have any major complaints with either but I much preferred the documentation that came with the AP kit, it's a lot more thorough.
 
traumprinz said:
I've built a Mojotone and AP amp kit (though not the 5E3). I don't have any major complaints with either but I much preferred the documentation that came with the AP kit, it's a lot more thorough.
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Thanks for the info--did you get their cabs, and if so, were they of similar quality? I'm shooting for the narrow panel lacquered tweed.
 
I built a Mojotone Princeton, which turned out to be a great amp - there was some wonkiness with holes needing to be slightly moved in the chassis for the output transformer, but not really anything you couldn’t tackle having built pedals.

Also was short on heater wire, but they sent that along without issue.

Tubes were mostly Mojotone branded, caps were yellow Mojotone branded, other parts seemed to be pretty good.

Regarding documentation, I got what Mojotone offered but also downloaded the instructions from StewMac and poured over Rob Robinettes site and sorta took the average of what they all said.
 
I built the the depot 5e3. I think it sounds great. The instructions were easy to follow and it worked straight away. I put a warehouse speaker in it, either the G30 or the et-65, I don’t remember. I believe it was the et-65, I dropped one in all my amps.
 
The kits are handy because you get everything included. When ordering parts for an amp build it's easy to forget some wire, or some particular screws you need for something. If you're building a plexi style amp then Valve Storm are wonderful - they seem to be an offshoot of the defunct kit sellers Metropoulis Amps. You can get a wiring kit for a Marshall which will have all the wire you would need and generally in the right colours, their turret boards and hardware kits include all bits you will forget to order and the components are generally much what I would buy anyway. Mojo hardware is excellent but I loathe Orange Drop caps with a passion. I don't ever use CC resistors because noise.

If I build a BF Fender style amp then I'll generally use the original stock Fender grounding scheme except for the mains plug. With Marshall I follow Psionic Audio's suggestion for an amp which will be vastly quieter than any stock Marshall. It's all on Youtube.

Mojo's hardware is generally good, same for Valve Storm. Weber's is a bit cheaper and wouldn't bother. These days for signal caps I use Vishay Roederstein MKT1813 630V from people like Amplified Parts.com - inexpensive and great quality. And as Psionic Audio says, if you want to use silver mica caps for the pF values don't use those with "500VSM" written on them. Use Cornell Dubilier which have "CDE" stamped on them.

In fact I would strongly recommend watching as many Psionic videos as you can. I have learnt more about building great sounding quiet running amps from him than from anyone else. And if you're building a tweed Deluxe I cannot recommend too strongly to use a Mercury Magnetics FTBP-350-P (or FTBP-350-P-U if you live outside the USA) as your power transformer. The regular Tweed Deluxe power trannies give out too high a B+ because wall voltage was lower when they were originally made. You can adjust for this but it's so easy with the slightly lower B+ version. It will sound more like an original Tweed Deluxe did back when they were first made. Using stock Deluxe values you will get the right voltages and the breakup will be way sweeter, have more punch and not disappear into a fuzzy mess. They make a BIG difference.
 
I’ve just finished the Mojotone 5e3 kit, but still re-working on several mods. it’s been a great experience, I’ll write a post when everything’s done. My amp build from scratch.

The volume knobs are incredibly hard to set at low volume. I think most of this is because they are wired backwards from most volume knobs. The Rob Robinette mod for “Eliminate Volume Knob Interaction” improves this. Depends on your use case if it’d be helpful.

I like the bleeder resistor mod for extra peace of mind. It for sure drains the high voltages when you power off, even without tubes installed.

I didn’t find the master volume very effective, because you don’t get a lot of preamp distortion from the amp. UNLESS you do the cascaded preamps mod or use a boost pedal in front. With an EQ pedal to cut lows and a loud boost pedal into the amp, I can get some nice preamp distortion and control the volume with the MV. But if you like to play loud anyway you’ll get the power amp distortion which is great.
 
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