yes we all doing good .. Got a big cook out we gonna  do this weekend  ,,, Benn working on a git for my great grandson ,, his mom wanted the neck painted RED ,, so I did ,, I wouldn;t have done it ,, but gotta admit  after it was done ,,looks really good !!!  Learn something on every one u make !!       U ok ?  Really liked ur little amp  sounds good ,, I gotta get into the wiring a little deeper ,, I think would b an added attraction if u had a cigar box amp ,,battery powered ,,when u showing for sale   ..

Jon...I'll check out Rod Elliots site.  I think that if you have any background in electronics at all, you'll take to LTSpice.  I can help you with what I know.  It's easy to model a circuit, and even predict the frequency response.  You can see when a circuit will start to distort, check harmonic content...a really nice piece of 'free' software.

Let me know what you think about the three designs.  I've got the tube part down I think.  I can fake the rest...LOL. 

Thanks Jon...BTW...Jon is my son's name.  We were going to name him Jean Pierre (French pronunciation) but were afraid his teachers would mispronounce it...so we named him Jon Pierre instead.  Thanks for the happy birthday wish and Happy Birthday to you dude!!!  I really do enjoy the building and designing aspect of this.  Have you used LTSpice?  It's an excellent free electronics design software package. 

I'm thinking about an amp design for CBG, but don't yet know what topology to build.  The LM386 design (Runoffgroove Little Gem and variants) at 9v just doesn't have a lot of clean head room. If you up the supply voltage to 12 or 18v then you're dealing with added batteries or using a walwart.  I built a little LM380 amp and it does ok at 1watt, but the LM380, although available, isn't widely used.  I designed a conditioning circuit ahead of it that mimics a Marshall amp.  I think the little speakers are the real problem with existing CBG amps.  Weber sells a 6" and a 6X9" guitar speaker that would be perfect.  What do you think?

i noticed in the chat you mentioned learning uploading and that its time consuming .

i use this free app to resize fotos . it takes a second , but then they are a fraction of the original size and upload in a flash . just thought i would offer to help , i wasted a lot of time with this before i figured out to use this app , and its free . i usually set em to like 800 by 600 .

http://www.fotosizer.com/

Kazoo is a great little instrument. Have you seen this video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmCXdaTbTh4&feature=channel_video_title

Thank you for your response. I always enjoy it when one question leads to another. It make for a good conversation. Yes, 151 and 1515 are not full chords. They are both missing the 3rd. Basically called intervals (chord fragments) Although, these tunings are very primative, they work real well for Delta style bottleneck slide and fingerpicking. (My CD4 covers the 151 tuning.) Also the first 2 highest strings; 51 are great for harmonizing scales. I use this all the time on my 6 string in Open D 1513(51) (CD1 explores this tuning) Here is the harmonized major scale. Tune 151 (GDG for example)

(1st string, 2nd string frets) (0,0) (2,4) (4,5) (5,7) (7,9) (9,10) (11,12) (12,12)

There is a clear method behind all this madness. LOL Enjoy