I bought the C.B. Gitty amp kit... https://www.cbgitty.com/amplifier-kits-parts/great-2-5-watt-parts-o...

I'm very disappointed with it. It has a terribly shrill sound with all treble and no base. There is a pot to adjust the gain but nothing to adjust the tone. Does anyone have any clue if you can add a tone pot to this kit?

For about 2/3 the price, I could have bought another Honeytone amp and just tore the parts out and installed them in cigar box. It would have more volume, better overdrive and a sound knob.

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Input jack or speaker? I don't really have an output jack. I have tried putting varous caps is varoils places but I'm not sure I'm putting them in the right place. None of them have made any difference.

The speaker leads = output jack. Check the caps before you just touch them to the circuitry...some are polarized and using them backwards could have undesirable results.

Hello Jim, very sorry to hear the amp isn't working out for you. The gain pot does affect the tone as well. Turning it all the way up makes the sound more overdriven and crunchy, turning it down makes it warmer. It is strange that it would seem so terribly shrill... we have built and sold an awful lot of these and the sound is usually good. Of course the instrument being amplified does have a big impact on the sound.

Thanks Ben, good point. So far I have only tried one guitar in that setup. I try others to see what they sound like. I'll let you know if it makes a difference.

It is possible that the amp board has an issue as well. On our Youtube channel we have demo videos of amps built from these boards being used with various guitars, both magnetic and piezo pickups:

https://www.youtube.com/user/benjamanb/search?query=amplifier

Thanks Ben.  From looking at the videos I'm thinking that it's my expectations rather than the board. I  did add a capacitor and pot across the input jack and that mellowed things out a bit and maybe it will sound better once it is installed in the box.

If you're using a Piezo pickup, a preamp makes a big difference. The 7545r preamp is inexpensive and gives you a lot of control. It can even be mounted in the amp...

Thanks, I may give that a try. It seems that every time I try an electronics project it ends up costing me more that if I just bought a new one of whatever I'm trying to build. If I get the preamp I'll have gone from more expensive than a Honeytone up to the Fender Frontman price tag.

It's useless trying to build cheaper than mass production methods, you can't do it, plain and simple.

Rather do this for the fun or the fact that it's easy to build something that looks way cooler than a Fender amp.
All the best from Bill. :D

Yeah, I totally get that. I'm not trying to save money, I just don't want to throw money away.

The idea of using the Honeytone or Fender amps would not be to use those amps as is but to pull the parts out and install them in another enclosure. I have a couple of car radios from the 30s that I want to re-purpose to amps but apparently I have gone down the wrong road so far.

You can run a simple tone circuit off the volume pot. Use a B100k pot and a 100nf/.1uf cap. Follow the tone circuit design at the bottom of this schematic.

Attachments:

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

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