Met an old amp builder at a flea market in Austin last year

I was digging through a pile of old radios and this guy maybe 70 years old walks up and starts pointing out which ones had bad transformers. He told me he built his first amp in 1972 from a schematic he found in a magazine. Said 'son, these new kits are nice but you never learn as much as when you have to hunt down every single part yourself.' We talked for maybe 20 minutes about biasing and speaker impedance. It really stuck with me how patient he was. Anybody else run into an old timer who gave you advice that changed how you build?

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the_anna17h ago

Did you catch what kind of amps he built? Tube stuff or solid state? I read an article last year about bias points and how guys like him would set them by ear. Said the old amps had more soul because of it. Cool you got to learn from someone who actually lived it.