Saturday, December 26, 2009

Guitar Amplifier

Well, I committed to build a guitar amplifier for my nephew and figured I might as well build two. One for my son Evan and the other for Kyle. This is another of those projects that have been mulling around in my brain for a long time. Here are the specs I wanted and what it should do:


  • Multiple inputs for a couple different things:
  • A very clean high impedance input for acoustic guitar pickups and for electric guitars for really clean sound
  • One input specifically designed to be over driven and give the "not clean" fuzz sound
  • Line level inputs for playing along with an iPod or similar 
  • Headphone amp for when it has to be quiet!
Having built a stereo amp recently using two "Gain Clone" boards from www.chipamp.com
I figured I would use these and have a 68Watt little screamer. Here is the driver I am going to use from Parts Express The 8" Driver

Having learned a little more about Eagle I drew up my Schematic Diagram and started assembling the parts. More to follow!


Update: Design phase is complete and I started breadboarding up the design. Here is initial scematic. Not sure how this will look... The clean channel uses a non inverting opamp with a one megohm input impedance. The other channel uses a CMOS inverter chip as an analog amp. Design courtesy of Craig Anderton from Electronic Projects for Musicians, Guitar Player Books 1980