Warning: DIY rant incoming...
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Originally Posted by jh4db536 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
you could build a barebones Beta22
$340 for 4 amp board kits
$105 for 1 Sigma22 powersupply kit
$30 for a transformer
$150 Joshua Tree Stepped Attenuator (Balanced) + Pot // or DACT $$$
the remainder is for the enclosure, misc hardware, neutrik XLR sockets, terminal blocks, knobs, etc.
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Not to nit-pick but this is somewhat of a pet peeve for me. You will have an extremely hard time building a balanced (4 board, single PS) beta22 for less than $1000. For starters you're not including shipping figures in any of your calculations, which trust me will add up fast. Next up, you're going to need a huge chassis if you put it all in the same enclosure, which in itself is a really bad idea. So plan on one large, one medium sized box. That brings me to the next big hurdle, case work and fabrication. The tools to build this amp could exhaust half your budget, easy. I mean do you really want to hack up the chassis that you just spent good money on and end up with a cruddy looking amp? So here's the thing, if you DIY on a daily basis and are proficient with chassis fabrication on a large scale project like this then yes, you can probably build one for around $1000. But if you're new to DIY, forget about it and do yourself a favor and start with something that will be a lot more forgiving of the mistakes that are likely to be made.
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You will need to build Everything of course in order to stay within your budget, but in the end youll have an amp that competes in the $1500 range. |
Try $5000 range. There is pretty much nothing on the commercial market that is the technical equivalent of the beta22. Can you get good sound out of what is offered, sure, but from an engineering perspective forget about it unless you're spending far above what we're talking about here. The balanced beta22 is a fully discrete, deeply class A, 50WPC speaker amp for goodness sake.
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Professionally built, this amp is probably 1500-2000. |
While some have offered them at this price before those that have done it are no longer doing it. Why? Because a simple balanced beta22 will probably take somewhere in the 40 to 60 hour range to build. I don't build amps for profit, never have, never will, but someone asked recently what I thought a fair price was for a balanced beta22 and here's my math.
Parts: $1500 (based on the minimum chassis requirements that I would have for this build)
Labor: assume 50hrs x $30hr = $1500 (and that's a cheap labor rate)
Base price: $3000
And mind you I wouldn't do it for that figure even if I was doing it, which I'm not.
So, sorry for the rant, I swear it's almost over, but people around here have a real lack of appreciation for what it takes to not only build something but to build it well. Yeah, you can hack something together for less but guess what, it's probably not going to last long. I could probably make a legit business out of fixing botched DIY builds that people have sold and that's half the problem. The other half is that people equate the parts cost of an amp with it values, which is nonsense in my book. [/rant]
If I may be allowed to make one on topic observation, the Headroom Balanced Desktop Amp is a great choice.
Ok, enough out of me for one day.