Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by MichaelS Country Boy Guitars on September 29, 2010 at 3:12am

Also, a source for cheap small speakers would be nice, 3-4" thanks, I'm sure this info will be helpful to us all.

Permalink Reply by Robbie Pitts on September 29, 2010 at 3:29am

Jameco p/n 1954818 is $2.95 for a 4" speaker. I use it with the Ruby circuit, and it seems to work pretty good.

MichaelS said:

Also, a source for cheap small speakers would be nice, 3-4" thanks, I'm sure this info will be helpful to us all.

Permalink Reply by DrByte on September 29, 2010 at 4:19pm

I buy a lot of audio parts/equipment from this place:
http://www.parts-express.com/speakers.cfm
and I have had great experiences with them.
Fast shipping, good quality, allaround good place to deal with.

Permalink Reply by David Sutton on September 29, 2010 at 6:00pm

I ordered a Ruby Amp from http://rubyamp.com/. It ships from Australia but came along pretty quickly. The guy that sells them was extraordinarily helpful with emails. I haven't built it yet.

I saw a bunch of these (built) for sale in York, PA but they didn't sound so hot so I wasn't sold on the amp. STEVE at rubyamp.com said you can run it through a little car speaker and get that tinny sound, but if you plug it into a real, 10" guitar amp speaker it's pretty impressive, so i hope to do that some day soon,

After I build the amp.

Permalink Reply by petey twofinger on October 25, 2010 at 8:43am

if you really want to go cheap , you can get amp circuits from kiddie tape recorders that have mics . i built one like this , and another out of a barbie karoke machine , those have reverb too .

i prefer this method over a kit any day , super cheep , much more hacking involved (the fun part) . if i was gonna buy a kit it would be a higher powered prebuilt amp module . those look cool .

Permalink Reply by MichaelS Country Boy Guitars on October 27, 2010 at 1:40pm

Thanks for the replies, good info and ideas so far. hmm Barbie has reverb, I wonder if Ken knows?

Permalink Reply by petey twofinger on November 6, 2010 at 10:38pm

dumpster/resale/salvation army .

but thats just me , i am sure there is a much smarter way and i am wrong .

Permalink Reply by Deke on November 9, 2010 at 12:52pm

I've built a couple amps with the www.guitarfuel.com amp chips, they sounded good with a decent speaker, but not that "in your face" blast you get from a "real" guitar amp. A quality speaker makes a REAL difference! I found some surplus quality speakers at allelectronics.com ( http://www.allelectronics.com/index.php) for a really good price.
Lately I've been canabalizing cheap low wattage (5-10 watts) guitar practice amps. I find them for $10 and up, rip out the pieces and reassemble into a cigar box. The only difference is you have to plug these into the wall. No portable playing, unless you add a circuit and a load of flashlight batteries for DC operation.
It is fun to make the amps and there are higher wattage (5-10) amp kits out there, but they go for $20-35 each, plus shipping-just for the amp module. Add a speaker , wiring, jacks, knobs & you've got quite an investment in a little CBG amp.

Permalink Reply by Dan on November 10, 2010 at 2:01pm

The guitar fuel MA3S Amp Harness works great. I have been using the version 3. They are coming out with a version 4 that also adds an echo setting. Can't beat them for the price.

Permalink Reply by Bob Harrison on November 22, 2010 at 2:34pm

Michaels,
Smokeyamps.com check him out, Bruce Zinky is my friend and has a 9 volt American make amp kit. I have seen the circuit board machines he uses to build his amps with. His claim is that his amp kits with speakers are as inexpensive but much higher quality as what you could get from China but made in the USA and on route 66 to boot…. Bruce Zinky at one time was the lead electrical engineer at Fender guitars, but now has his own gig.

Cheers
Bob

Permalink Reply by Mark Reaney on November 30, 2010 at 6:02pm

I took the lead from some videos I saw on youtube and built a Futurekit FK617. It's a great 15 watt amp kit for around $15. It has volume, gain, bass and treble controls and a switch that toggles between line and preamp (Guitar, mic) inputs. You can get it from Quality Kits:
http://store.qkits.com/moreinfo.cfm/FK617

It is balanced for a 4 ohm speaker, so drop by your friendly neighborhood auto scrap yard and see what they have lying around. And you can always buy the kit pre-assembled if you don't want to do the soldering yourself.

Permalink Reply by MichaelS Country Boy Guitars on December 2, 2010 at 11:03am

Thats alot of parts for $15, not bad. Is it plug in or battery powered?


Mark Reaney said:

I took the lead from some videos I saw on youtube and built a Futurekit FK617. It's a great 15 watt amp kit for around $15. It has volume, gain, bass and treble controls and a switch that toggles between line and preamp (Guitar, mic) inputs. You can get it from Quality Kits:
http://store.qkits.com/moreinfo.cfm/FK617

It is balanced for a 4 ohm speaker, so drop by your friendly neighborhood auto scrap yard and see what they have lying around. And you can always buy the kit pre-assembled if you don't want to do the soldering yourself.

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