Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mark Reaney on December 3, 2010 at 2:58pm

You can use a battery, but at 15w it will use it up pretty fast. I use a dc converter since I always have a bunch of them lying around


MichaelS said:

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.

Permalink Reply by Mark Reaney on December 3, 2010 at 3:01pm

The Minty Amp site has been down for repairs for quite a long time. Anybody know where else to get one of those kits?

MArk

Permalink Reply by Jon Pruett on January 11, 2011 at 3:29pm

I had great luck with a pre-amp kit from http://www.fuzzboxworld.com/page5.html

Dennis shipped the kit very fast, the instructions were clear and easy to follow, and the pre-amp sounds great!

Here's some photos of the finished product in an Altoids tin - http://www.cigarboxnation.com/photo/albums/mint-tin-preamp

 

 

Permalink Reply by Ethan on January 26, 2011 at 6:16am

Bob Harrison said:

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

I check out the Smokeyamps.com and they have some great little amps for sale. However, I didn't find any "kits" for building your own. I fired off an email over the weekend to them, but still haven't heard anything back. I like the idea of buying U.S. and the sound of the tiny amps they sell is pretty impressive. I hope they haven't discontinued selling kits.

Permalink Reply by Nick Vasallo on August 30, 2011 at 2:43am

Hi Petey, what do you mean by high powered prebuilt amp modules? You mean something like this: http://store.qkits.com/moreinfo.cfm/FA617 or this: http://www.hobbyengineering.com/H1732.html?

 

I want to built a powerful internal amp unit for my travel guitar, please see next post.

petey twofinger said:

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 Nick Vasallo on August 30, 2011 at 2:55am

Hi guys,

This is any awesome thread BTW, thanks for the link to Guitar Fuel, Michael.

 

I have a project I want to start. basically I want to modify my travel guitar - Squier Mini Player w/internal speaker/amp: http://www.musiciansfriend.com/guitars/squier-mini-player-electric-...

 

I want it to be as loud and good sounding as possible and don't mind spending more on the mods than the actual guitar itself. I found this on Guitar Fuel: http://guitarfuel.com/SD-MAH3_Amp_Harness.php. It looks pretty cool, levels of distortion and comes pre-assembled. But I want it to be LOUD if I need it to be. The Guitar Fuel harness is only 5w.

 

I also found these more powerful amps, but they are not ready to rock n' roll like the Guitar Fuel kit: http://www.hobbyengineering.com/H1732.html (18w) and http://store.qkits.com/moreinfo.cfm/FK617 (15w). How hard would it be to turn these into something like the Guitar Fuel kit and apply a distortion unit to it?

 

Lastly, I want the best speaker I can fit. I think it's a 4" or 3" speaker. Either way would something like this be good? http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=264-812

 

thanks guys!

Permalink Reply by petey twofinger on August 31, 2011 at 5:45am

yeah nick , thats exactly what i meant .

 

i have found from testing speakers , that i prefer to use nothing smaller than a 5 inch speaker for guitar . not sure about that 3 you have there , its a lil different but , a 3 inch speaker is a 3 inch speaker .

 

it does make it bigger , but then you have room for a large battery / batteries . on the second to last one i built i used "C" cell sized ni-cad cells i got out of a rechargable drill battery pack . its really nice . thats the amp i grab all the time now , cause you dont NEED an adapter .

 

if they are kits you may want to experiment with capacitor values in the audio signal chain , that really effects the tone , you could maybe have 2 on a switch . then you could use it for bass , or just have different "tones" .

Permalink Reply by Nick Vasallo on August 31, 2011 at 5:54am

Awesome, thanks Petey. A rechargable unit sounds amazing. Props.

Here is the progress on my project: http://www.squier-talk.com/forum/squier-vintage-modified-models/637...

petey twofinger said:

yeah nick , thats exactly what i meant .

 

i have found from testing speakers , that i prefer to use nothing smaller than a 5 inch speaker for guitar . not sure about that 3 you have there , its a lil different but , a 3 inch speaker is a 3 inch speaker .

 

it does make it bigger , but then you have room for a large battery / batteries . on the second to last one i built i used "C" cell sized ni-cad cells i got out of a rechargable drill battery pack . its really nice . thats the amp i grab all the time now , cause you dont NEED an adapter .

 

if they are kits you may want to experiment with capacitor values in the audio signal chain , that really effects the tone , you could maybe have 2 on a switch . then you could use it for bass , or just have different "tones" .

Permalink Reply by petey twofinger on August 31, 2011 at 6:19am

well thats a little different than what i had in my head . cool ideas you have there . if you do use that distortion kit it will help it dirt-up at lower levels , once that thing gets to a certain point it'll feedback . i did play one of those at guitar center a while back , it was considerably quieter than the generic version my buddy had in the 80's . i actually got my kid a mini strat for her birthday , i ended up replacing the tuners cause the ones that came on it were TRASH .

 

for feedback issues there may be some tricks you could do with mounting the speaker / pick-up using nylon washers , or something to dampen it a lil. also if it ends up eating batteries you could figure out a decent way to get power into it . even using a trs jack and a breakout box . ya dig ?  use a stereo cable , have the power run on the 3rd wire to a splitter / power box/pedal .

 

only one thing , you may have a contender ....

 

http://www.zzounds.com/item--FERNMD02

Permalink Reply by Nick Vasallo on August 31, 2011 at 1:48pm

That Nomad guitar is goin' DOWN! haha

petey twofinger said:

well thats a little different than what i had in my head . cool ideas you have there . if you do use that distortion kit it will help it dirt-up at lower levels , once that thing gets to a certain point it'll feedback . i did play one of those at guitar center a while back , it was considerably quieter than the generic version my buddy had in the 80's . i actually got my kid a mini strat for her birthday , i ended up replacing the tuners cause the ones that came on it were TRASH .

 

for feedback issues there may be some tricks you could do with mounting the speaker / pick-up using nylon washers , or something to dampen it a lil. also if it ends up eating batteries you could figure out a decent way to get power into it . even using a trs jack and a breakout box . ya dig ?  use a stereo cable , have the power run on the 3rd wire to a splitter / power box/pedal .

 

only one thing , you may have a contender ....

 

http://www.zzounds.com/item--FERNMD02

Permalink Reply by Hobo 63 on November 2, 2011 at 7:58am

Just order this http://item.mobileweb.ebay.co.uk/viewitem?itemId=250530515447

Permalink Reply by Habanera Hal on January 28, 2012 at 2:37pm

Janne-

How loud can this go?  I can't find specs on the output.  Thanks.  Also, have any pics of one you've built?

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