Category Archives: Hardware

DIY $10 Guitar Practice Amp in a Cigar Box

Posted on August 2, 2010 | 6 Comments

If you ever wanted to use your electric guitar to jam along with a group of friends playing acoustic outside, then this is the project for you.

It’s easy to make, and only takes about an hour.  I made my circuit based on the following instructions, but modified some component values based on what I had on hand.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/6368059/crackerboxamp

It sounds great and with the gain all the way up, is suprisingly very loud.  The sound is very distorted, both leads and powerchords blend well with acoustic guitar.  Dialing the gain back provides a usable tone, but tends to sound a little bit lo-fi and cheap (well, it does only cost around $10)  in a bad way.

It’s a great project to get started in electronics, and is actually practical.

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Getting Started with a DIY Mic Preamp(SC1-mk2)

Posted on July 3, 2010 | 1 Comment

I was wanting to work on a more elaborate project that would actually result in some gear that I really needed in my studio.  My studio setup was nice but was lacking a high quality preamp.  After some research I decided on getting a fivefish SC1-mk2 preamp kit.  I’d heard great reviews on it’s quality and got two channels to be my main clean “go-to” preamp.

I decided to resurrect an old Radioshack brand stereo reciever case into my new preamp.  It was a nice 2U space rack and also had 2 big analog VU meters.

Currently I’ve finished one channel and am troubleshooting some issues with broken DPDT switches that were built into the old Radioshack case.

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The old radioshack reciever I got for $5

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The reciever with all the guts taken out

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DIY Simple Fuzz Pedal

Posted on May 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

I’ve been wanting more experience making analog effects for my guitars and keyboards.  I did a lot of searching on the net for things I can make with common components I was likely to have on hand and found this very easy DIY project.

Simple Fuzz Pedal

I found a simple circuit using an LM386n power amp chip and some diodes to make a fuzz effect. http://www.instructables.com/id/Simple-overdrive-effect-pedal/

The recording below was made using a squier telecaster, and the fuzz pedal run through a clean keyboard amp.  It was recorded with a shure sm57 and no other effects were added.

I modified some of the capacitor values based on what I had available, I went with a .01uF ceramic (instead of .1) and 100uF electrolytic (instead of a 220).  The results was a little disappointing at first, more of an annoying background buzz than a fuzz or overdrive.  I played with the supply voltage and realized that lower supply voltage resulted in the fuzz kicking in at lower volume levels, I found the optimal supply voltage to the chip was just below 5V.  If you’re setting up to use this with a 9V battery, you can use a voltage regulator or potentiometer to allow you to change the voltage to tailor the sound of the effect.

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Piano Restoration and Refinishing

Posted on October 28, 2009 | 2 Comments
I just received an old 1942 Wurlitzer Studio Upright Piano for free.  The piano played fairly well and despite not having been tuned in over 20 years(!) it was still playable and unbelievably in tune with itself(although about 30 cents flat compared to A440).  I decided, against my own better judgment, to try to fix up this free piano into great shape for under $500 (including moving fee).

Finished Product

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Build Your Own Simple Condenser Microphone

Posted on July 20, 2009 | Leave a comment

Another Microphone project I tried recently was reviving an old generic dynamic mic that had gone dead.  I opened it up and removed the dynamic capsule, the circuit that went along with it, and the internal windscreen. I left the wires that connected the to the three pin XLR jack at the bottom of the mic.  After some research, I decided to go with a very simple circuit to operate from 48V phantom power for my first attempt.

The circuit consists of a cheap electret condenser element (around 3 bucks at radio shack), connected in series with a 47kOhm resistor, the “hot” wire(connected to pin 1) goes the the resistor, which is connected to the positive side (red wire in the picture to the above).  The ground of the mic element(bare wire) was connected to pin three, and the negative output of the capsule(white wire) was connected to pin two.  Then, I went to short pins two and three together, but that had already been done on the microphone body I was using.

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