Starting a new thread for this, since it's really a separate project to the foot drum. But inspired by needing something to plug the foot drum/stomp box into, I have decided to build a super cheap, lo-fi combo amp based on the Noisy Cricket circuit.
First up, I found this old and ugly Sanyo speaker, made a long time ago in a universe far far away. Or at least from before this sort of cheap home stereo gear was made from moulded plastic.
The 6" 5W speaker is perfect for now (a standard Noisy Cricket puts out 0.5W). If I want a better sound later I can swap to a car speaker, or even a 6" guitar speaker (but only if I can get one dirt cheap).
I did an initial test using an old headphone practice amp I built some years back. It sounded surprisingly sweet although the volume was very low. Even though the amp is based on the same chip (LM386), it is designed only for headphones and has a much lower output.
I am thinking of top-mounting the controls, input jack at bottom right, and DC jack at the back, with a fake control plate made out of metal that I can screw to the speaker enclosure. I am not sure what to do about the ugly box. I can embrace the brown and leave it as is (apart from a clean), I could paint, or cover in something else if I can find some vinyl on the cheap. Open to suggestions.
The circuit I am building has a switchable bass cap as well as a passive low-pass tone control. If that's not enough EQ I will adjust later. I don't think the cheap little speaker will deal with too much bass anyway.
DC
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