A New Guitar Amp

[cuppajack]

I recently decided to give learning guitar another shot after giving up nearly 15 years ago, and bought a shiny Les Paul.

Of course I pretty much broke the bank on the guitar purchase and had to make due with a small practice amp that I built last summer. I'd been meaning to tweak the amp a little, add a larger speaker, and change the enclosure and I figured I might as well try a cigar box to match my Tatuaje Lighter and ash tray...

This is my prototype:

I'm not sure I love the lay-out of the volume and tone knobs, but it sounds surprisingly good!

 

[switters]

ROCK! That looks really cool. I had a crappy little practice amp one time that looked like a pack of Camels.

 

[Eshaw99]

tHATYTDSZaE4Q21

(The above was my two-year-old's response. Guess I should watch my computer more closely)

That's pretty cool. I'm gonna try to build one of those cigar box guitars this summer.

 

[slcraiders]

That is wicked cool! What sort of wattage does the box unit produce? Thanks for sharing.

 

[cuppajack]

It outputs a blistering 0.2 watts of pure rock.

It also occasionally picked up a radio station if I have the gain cranked all the way up. Not quite sure why that is...

It was a really fun DIY electronics project that cost about $11 in parts:
http://www.makezine.com/09/crackerboxamp/

I'll be making some more of these for sure!

 

[Nimrod]

Where is the 6550 in the picture?

 

[bpj87]

That amp is sweet!

 

[Brickhouse]

Nice bro

 

[flamchop]

Wow that is cool! How about a pic of that Les Paul? I always loved LP's... I'm mainly a drummer but I've also been playing guitar for a while. Mostly fooling around but it's so much fun!

Enjoy it!

 

[stevehawk]

Very nice! :thumbs:

I followed the link to the article. Unfortunately, not all the pages are available for public consumption -- you have to subscribe or purchase the edition that it is in.

Any way you could post the full set of instructions?

 

[cuppajack]

Thanks guys!
I had a couple pic of the Les posed in another thread... I'll add 'em here too (these two link to few more):





I'll see if I can dig up my copy of that issue to scan-in... Though the most important part, the circuit diagram and parts list, are in the PDF link to off the MAKE site...

When you are picking out a cigar box for this project be sure to check the thickness of the walls and top of the box, as the parts that mount on the box can only mount on certain thicknesses... I also had a hell of a time finding a speaker that was the right specs locally and ended up ordering a few off of ebay.