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Permalink Reply by Rick Alexander on December 8, 2016 at 12:35pm

I tried exactly that with a car door speaker that was in the garage, that was in rough shape, and it sounded really good. I got a 1 1/4" speaker that I wanted to use and put the amp in a mint tin, but it didn't sound good, so I tried the car speaker just because I had it handy. I was surprised at how good it sounded.

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Permalink Reply by Scavanged Sound (Pete) on December 8, 2016 at 1:26pm

I haven't tried a car speaker yet. I use 3 watt 4 inch speakers that I get from a local electronic supply for about 5 bucks and 6 inch 5 watts cost me about 8 bucks. The amps I build use the LM386 chip and do about .5 watt of output. I think you can push a larger speaker more effectively if you wire in a wall wart instead of running the battery. I always wite in a battery terminal though so you can still keep it portable .

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Permalink Reply by John Sawyer on December 8, 2016 at 8:32pm

I do this all the time...

4 to 6=1/2 in car stereo speakers work great.  The best ones are single cone (no 2-way or 3-way).

Go to a stereo shop, they throw them away... buy a pizza and leave with tons...

The Artec amp Gitty has is great, so are $9 lm386 amps you can get on fleabay.  For some, a really small capacitor (.001uf) across the input calms down the hiss.. 

Oh, the Psycho Knob is amazing on a cheap amp.  

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Permalink Reply by Scott aka Farmer Ted on December 9, 2016 at 1:17am

Two important notes about speakers and the 9v amp circuits like the LM386.

First, the speaker(s) must have an 8 ohm rating for the LM386 circuit. This can be a single 8 ohm, two 4 ohm speakers wired in series, two 16 ohm in parallel, etc.

The second consideration is the speaker(s) wattage rating. I've built many LM386 amps (not kits), and have had success driving speakers with up to 40 watts rating.

But in many cases, higher powered speakers are designed to operate at their best efficiency when driven/powered by a higher-output amplifier. For example, a speaker rated at 200 watts RMS will need more power than the LM386 circuit provides.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on December 9, 2016 at 9:31am

+1 on what Scott said.

Car speakers, stereo speakers or computer speakers aren't rated for guitar output so prolonged use and higher volumes will rag them out over a short time.

You need guitar rated speakers for guitar and bass rated speakers for bass if you don't want to keep buying speakers.

WGS and Eminence make great instrument rated speakers for little money. I bought a WGS 10" guitar speaker for 40USD rated for guitar-8ohm-20watt.

Bigger speakers(6"- 8"- 10"- 12"- 15") sound better and louder because they push more air. Just remember to get the lower watt rating for the 9volt amps.

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Permalink Reply by Bluesheart on December 9, 2016 at 1:33am

Thanks for all the good advice folks!

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Permalink Reply by sparky37 on December 10, 2016 at 4:48pm

I used one of these speakers on a c.b. gitty amp and worked great! http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/60-9240

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Permalink Reply by Denis U on December 11, 2016 at 11:12pm

My first LM386 sounds fine through my twin 12" Celestion greenbacks.  Haven't done a side by side test with other amps, but as all I do is at home, I neither need nor want to blow the bloody doors off!!

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Permalink Reply by Scott aka Farmer Ted on December 12, 2016 at 1:41am

The LM386 circuit/amp can sound great through the right speaker(s)and enclosure. Or it can sound awful through the wrong setup.

Now crank it to 11 and blow the roof off.

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Permalink Reply by Denis U on December 12, 2016 at 3:40am

Either I've been very lucky with the speakers I've tried with mine, or my great threshold needs revising upwards

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Permalink Reply by Scott aka Farmer Ted on December 12, 2016 at 4:30am

I once had a client that wanted one of my LM386 amps installed into a huge sub-woofer speaker pictured here:

This beast would normally be driven by a high powered amp found in the trunk of those P.O.S. import cars with the ratty muffler to make the car sound like it wasn't a P.O.S.

The speaker is rated at 600 watts. Is it any wonder the LM386 didn't even make a mouse fart?

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on December 12, 2016 at 10:53am

Some of the car amps have a 4ohm input only and some have an optional 8ohm input that is converted to 4ohm output for the speakers/subs. Those amp make good power amps to drive those bigger wattage speaker/subwoofer that most likely will handle the higher instrument rating.

I have a First Act guitar amp that is 4watt - 4ohm with a small speaker 4ohm/4watt that was ratty sounding, I hooked up a subwoofer from a TV Surround sound system(what I had at the time) that was 4ohm/10watt. It handled acoustic/CBG guitar just fine. I played my bass guitar through it after modding the amp's input cap and ratted out the speaker after a year. If it had been a higher watt sub, maybe it would've lasted longer, maybe not.

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