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Permalink Reply by Craig Cox on December 10, 2010 at 11:54am

no need to hurry. guitar center sells them for this everyday (though not with shipping. I have one in the area). they aren't too bad for a plastic box with a 2" speaker, and there's a belt clip for walkin' around. great little stocking stuffer for the guitar player on your list.

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Permalink Reply by econnofoot on March 28, 2011 at 9:57pm

I got one, yesterday, from Musicians Friend...I've been planning to build my own amp in a box a'la Noisy Cricket but haven't gotten around to it so figured why not try this...I'll admit I'm slightly impressed.  I'm a bass player but I started adding piezos to builds and wanted something small to test builds with and maybe busk in the street with.

So here is my take on it,yep it's plastic...comes with a battery that was crap, but my volt meter sez it's fine....I've read wal-warts will burn these up but don't know.  Three knobs on top are plastic and nearly impossible to read, magic marker marks probably fix this.  If you follow the settings provided makes some pretty cool tones,I'm using it primarily on 3 string slide builds and I do kinda dig some of the settings they recommend. Feeds back alot just plugged in, even across the room,not a big deal really in most instances but it did freak my shop cat out.  I had some MP3 headphones in the shop, nothing super fancy so tried them, makes pretty cool but bulky headphone amp, but allows you to use the belt clip and not squeal like a piggy.  Dropped it about 4 foot and didn't crack.

Opened it up but didn't have my glasses or a magnifier to look super close but I assume the chip is a 386 common amp circuit, for 20 bucks looks pretty well set up inside and serviceable and/ or tweak able.  Pretty sure adding a 1/8" input and a output or two is pretty possible.  The battery compartment eats alot of space though so speaker upgrade doesn't look too easy least with the small ones I had laying about...which are small surround sound speakers roughly 2" but will never fit internally, does appear the entire guts can come out pretty easy(the knobs/pots might be an issue) and put into another box and could probably add to the pcb, ie a trem effect or delay for example.

 

Aside from CBG's I do a fair amount of 'circuit bending' and think this amp also suits that type of experimentation, looks tad bit like a coin purse but I can deal with that. I'll probably buy another and recommend it to anyone.

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Permalink Reply by Mark on March 29, 2011 at 11:02am

The power amp chip in the Honeytone is a thing called a TDA7052, which is rated at 1.2 watts. That's a "bridged" type amp - which, in simple terms, means that neither of the wires to the speaker is a ground wire (unlike the LM386).

Also inside the Honeytone is a pre-amp stage based on a TL072, which is a dual op-amp chip.

The following link has some info about the circuitry and about mods to improve it:

http://www.angelfire.com/music/harmonica/honeytone.html

 

I've heard people say that the Honeytone circuit sounds a lot better through a larger speaker. Obviously there isn't much room for a bigger speaker in the standard case but I guess it might be possible to take the electronics out and mount it in a bigger box.

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