Ceria Tone Project

This project has been a joint effort between myself and my customer who purchased this beautiful little Champ clone from Ceria Tone Amplifiers In Malaysia. If you ever wanted to build an amp or own a classic clone be sure to check out the Ceria Tone site. They supply kits of parts or build the whole amp for you if you'd prefer.

My customer, Tim, got this amp built for him by Ceria Tone and decided to make his own cab for it. He needed a little help with the project and that's where I came in. After a bit of emailing, he bought the chassis in for me to have a look at. Together we figured out a cabinet design and size. It was decided to make the box out of pine which is available at a reasonable cost from Bunning's Hardware

So after figuring out the exact dimensions I got out my trusty circular saw and got into it. After the cab was glued and screwed together, Tim took it and applied the stain. He was a little disappointed with the job but I think it looks great. It's very hard to get a 'factory job' on DIY projects the first time and we all get better at things the more we do them.

This is how the amp finished up.

Tim decided to go for a stained finish with wheat grill cloth he purchased from the States. I decided to use a floating baffle design which I think worked out really well and sounds great.

Tim also bought the cool leather handle. I put on some rubber feet purchased from Penn Fabrication in Melbourne, fitted Tim's Celestion 'Greenback' 16 ohm speaker and the amp was complete.

We decided to go for an almost fully closed back. There is no vent for the heat from the tubes to escape but there are only three tubes in this amp running at less than 10 watts so we'll see how it goes. It would be a shame but if need be we can cut a vent into the top.

When the amp was first tested there was a just a little too much hum coming from the speaker so a slight mod was required to the power supply which basically cut the background hum to zero.

This is quite a sweet sounding little amp with a hint of break-up at higher volumes. The tremolo is absolutely faultless and sounds about as good as tremolo can get. The Greenback suits this amp perfectly but I'm sure either a Jenson or Australian made Lorantz would sound really good also.