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.
 
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