Amped

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 02:14:37 +0000

Some progress has been made on my guitar chip amp. Readers may remember that at the time of my last post, I had tinkered with KiCad and created the basic layout for my PCB. Since then, I finalized the design and had it fabbed through the great OSH Park batch prototyping service. This is a great deal: it wound up being about $10 a board (you get three at $5/sq. in) and the boards are of excellent quality. It took about 3 weeks from time of design submission for the finished boards to arrive in Canada from the States.

KiCad Level 0 Achieved

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 04:21:30 +0000

When we moved to Canada, I sold any guitar gear that wouldn’t fit in a backpack. This has left me without the ability to plug in my electric guitar for the last ten months, a situation that must be rectified (ha, ha). I just need a small practice amp, and those can be found on an IC these days. One needs only to add a little soldering, attach a speaker, repeat as necessary for whatever mistakes one makes, and ta-da: a small custom amp that one could have bought mass-produced from China for 1/50th of the price of building one’s own. But of course there is value in the making, or so we tell ourselves.

Amp on Insignificant Bits

Amped

KiCad Level 0 Achieved