Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Jim Saraceno on December 27, 2016 at 10:19am

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.

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Permalink Reply by Lane Martin on December 29, 2016 at 7:48am

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.

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Permalink Reply by Ben "C. B. Gitty" Baker on December 27, 2016 at 9:05am

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.

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Permalink Reply by Jim Saraceno on December 27, 2016 at 10:25am

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.

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Permalink Reply by Ben "C. B. Gitty" Baker on December 28, 2016 at 4:12am

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

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Permalink Reply by Jim Saraceno on December 29, 2016 at 2:31am

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.

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Permalink Reply by John Sawyer on December 28, 2016 at 5:26am

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...

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Permalink Reply by Jim Saraceno on December 29, 2016 at 2:40am

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.

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Permalink Reply by Bufo Bill on December 29, 2016 at 10:50am

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

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Permalink Reply by Jim Saraceno on December 30, 2016 at 1:02pm

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.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Craig on December 31, 2016 at 9:11am

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:

• Noisy_Cricket_Schematic_Smaller.gif, 41 KB

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Permalink Reply by Jim Saraceno on December 31, 2016 at 4:10pm

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

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