Guitar Practice Amp
Approx construction cost US$39
A low-cost amplifier that will allow the budding guitarist to improve his/her playing technique, without annoying the household or neighbors!
Commercial guitar amplifiers, even those intended for practicing, tend to be fairly expensive and have many features such as gain and tone controls that are seldom used, while lacking more useful ones such as an extra input for a microphone or another guitar. The budding musician's money could be better spent on other accessories or even a better guitar, especially as a simple practice amplifier for use with headphones can easily be built around a cheap integrated circuit.
Even a more ambitious version for driving a speaker providing an output of a few watts, which would be quite loud enough to annoy the neighbors or for playing in a small hall, only requires the addition of a cheap power amplifier i.c and a few more components.
The simple project described here has been designed for easy construction with virtually no off-board wiring apart from the mains transformer, speaker and an optional headphone socket.
More details on this construction project can be found in the February 2002 issue of EPE Online, the world's first web-delivered electronics and computing hobbyist magazine.
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