$10 DIY Cigar Box Guitar Practice Amp

A simple guitar practice amp made using a cigar box. Based around the LM386N Audio amplifier chip. All the components can be found at radioshack for around $10. More info here:
http://jordancolburn.com/2010/08/02/diy-10-guitar-practice-amp-in-a-cigar-box/

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Guitar
• Practice
• Amp
• DIY
• Electronics
• LM386n
• music
• simple
• project

[nachosomundo]

What are the dimensions of your cigar box and how much room did you have left after making it?

[musicskate0]

@nachosomundo It's about 3" deep and 5"x7" on the front. Tons of room left for picks or a strap, a short cable, or extra batteries.

[snareoutanowhere]

I just built one of these and i was wondering how you mounted the speaker to the lid of the box... is it just glued?

[musicskate0]

@snareoutanowhere Yup, I just used some crazy glue all along the edge of the speaker. Before attaching the speaker, it was really queit, but after attaching it to the cigar box, the sound improved dramatically in volume and tone.

[neveragaineverever]

You could get everything from radioshack but it would be ridiculously expensive! The potentiometers and jacks are $4 each, the switch is a couple bucks and the lm386 is $1.69. Plus then all the caps and resistors come in multi packs.

I pulled all the parts out of their drawers and then realized that it was going to be way too expensive. I bought all the parts online at the cheapest place I could find and it was still like 15 bucks. And it's taking forever to ship.

[musicskate0]

@neveragaineverever Yeah, all parts are available at Rshack, but buying them all there puts the price way over $10. The project was probably less than $10 for me since I used resistors and capacitors I had on hand, as well as some scavenged potentiometers and jacks from old broken equipment. The only things I had to buy were the lm386n, perfboard and battery holder. Save your extra parts, cables and connectors , take apart old electronics and as you do more projects and you'll save money.

[coolc52]

Dude, please send me the schematics!

[HeartWisdom2010]

cool



[soultosqueeze11]

can you please either post or send me specific directions on how to make this...im in the process of buiding a cigar box guitar, and thought it would be cool to have a cigar box speaker to run it through. thanks

[Lapsteelz]

Nice work!

[ThisIsHafiy]

using gain? how bout running it through MT-2?