Built In Speaker

[r_mathern]

I'm new to the site and can't get the search engine to work very well. Is there any information on building a battery powered amp and speaker into a guitar. Pig nose sells one but it's boring and I think I could do a better, or at least more interesting job. I'm less concerned with the speaker giving an accurate sound reproduction than I am with the speaker being a part of the instrument/system itself.

[billm90]

I'm new to the site and can't get the search engine to work very well. Is there any information on building a battery powered amp and speaker into a guitar. Pig nose sells one but it's boring and I think I could do a better, or at least more interesting job. I'm less concerned with the speaker giving an accurate sound reproduction than I am with the speaker being a part of the instrument/system itself.

I am going to attemp to expierment with this. kind of a take off of the sustainer ideas posted.

Radio shacks sells, or at least used to sell a 1 watt amp kit ~ 10 bucks. it is real small and simple to solder up. I have built it and made a portable practice amp by stuffing it into some old 1960's CB case, I used the cb speaker and it works fine. it is like a 2.5 or 3" speaker

there is a small trip pot for volume. I wired in a pot with a volume knob to control volume instead of the volume trim pot.

then there is an optional cap you can install for more gain. this makes a fuzz type distortion. I put it on a switch to make a fuzz option.

i want to put this in a guitar and install the speaker under the pickup to make feedback.... some guys call this a DIY sustainer, but it is more so a direct feedback to the amp.

they used a piezo buzzer for the speaker. so I am going to test both.

I think they also had a 10 watt version. mine runs off a 9v battery. 1 watt is enough to hear it in a quiet room. for more power I would go up some watts

I think the speaker will be key to making it sound good.

if you are into a higher priced option, zoom sold a portable small digital effects processor with a built in speaker. it runs on 6 or 8 AA's I picked one up when I got a silent guitar off ebay because it sounded like crap. I was thinking about intalling this in the guitar to fix the original electronics problems. as a plus it has built in effects. this only sounds good going through head phones. the speaker in this processor sucks. needs a replacement.

Doing all this seems fairly easy. I guess the hard part for you would be routing for speaker and electronic placement?

[weezerboy]

www.runoffgroove.com - look for the ruby and the little gem

or the noisy cricket ( http://www.beavisaudio.com/ )

i think any 386 based mini amp should do the trick, cos they're stupidly small and not too difficult to get working.