psiico

I'd be leery of building an amp without electronics experiance, you can easily be killed by the voltages in even a small 20 watt amp. If you want something cheap and easy to build with no risk of electric shock go over to www.runoffgroove.com and have a look at the Little Gem and Ruby schematics. They are tiny amps, only 1/2 watt to 1 watt but they have a great sound with the right speakers. Not something you can jam along with a drummer with but for sitting around your apartment you can get loud enough to annoy your neighbors. I built one with tone controls and a distortion channel, sounds great.

I don't know about that particular brand but I shielded my Epiphone with aluminium tape, works fine. Checked it with a multimeter in random spots, the pieces connect even though they have a glue backing. I heard from somewhere if you press it down really hard you squish the glue enough to make electrical contact. I don't know if that's why it worked but it worked for me. The only downside is the smell from the adhesive but the stuff they use on the far more expensive copper tape smells the same so no bother. That and you can't solder to it.

Thanks!

What do I do with the other 4? Isolate them from each other and everything else? Snip them off? Connect them together? Just let them flap in the breeze? Lol, I have no idea what I'm doing, hahaha. This is one way to learn though, dive in headfirst and try to swim.

Here's a more important question, what do these materials sound like? How does a lucite guitar or an acrylic guitar sound? I've always thought they looked cool but never had a chance to play one so I have no idea.

I got my order from Mouser today, no problems with customs. Cost at the door was nothing, the postman just dropped it off. I wouldn't hesitate to deal with them again. I did find another Canadian component supplier though: http://www.e-sonic.com/acc/home.aspx

Has anyone done the midrange mod shown on this webpage before? http://www.jpbourgeois.org/guitar/micos1.htm I bought a couple of those TL021 inductors but I'm not sure how to wire them. In the pics on the webpage it only shows 2 of the leads from the inductor being used. Which 2? They have 6 leads, 3 on a side.

I'm new to this electronics thing, I rewired a few guitar switches in the past but lately decided to take a shot at pedal building. Stumbled across this thread and I'm glad I did, hopefully someone here can answer a couple of questions on scrounging for me. I tore apart an old (1976) stereo for parts. Got the usual haul, pots, jacks, tons of multicolored wire, resistors, etc.. There are things that I know what they are but don't know what value. There are quite a few diodes, not one has a label, just a red stripe to mark the anode. Is there a way to test them? Can I safely experiment with them, just dropping different ones into different circuits to see how they affect the sound? There are some what appear to be tantalum capacitors, how can I veryify this? They are unlabeled.

I saw one here: http://www.tonepad.com/ but it wasn't all that simple, lol. Don't get so worked up about PCB's. They're easy enough to make, Radio Shack has that kit, comes with two small boards, etchant, a pen for marking the parts of the board not being etched, drill bit and something else I can't remember. It won't look as pretty as the ones you order since you'll be hand drawing it but you could do it without much trouble. I've seen this kit at my local The Source for $20 Cdn. Another option is that blue stuff, I forget what it's called. Basically you print on it with your printer then iron it onto your PCB, peel off the backing and etch.

Found a couple of Canadian suppliers: http://www.active-tech.ca/b2c/redirect.cfm?pn=2 http://www.sayal.com/index.asp http://www.rpelectronics.com/

Just go to Radio Shack (The Source). They have those resistors.

You can get all of that except the switch and the transistors at Radio Shack although I think they are all Circuit City now instead of Radio Shack. This is the transitor you need: http://www.mouser.com/index.cfm?handler=di...e_pcodeid=51258 Or I'm an idiot, lol. I'm new at this too.

I'm also in Canada, I just made an order with Mouser. https://www.mouser.com/ They allow shipping by USPS so there shouldn't be any problems at the border with that. UPS and FedEx kill you with fees, a $1 order can have a $45 brokerage fee on it, the post office only charges $5 for brokerage no matter what the value of the item. There might be some NAFTA issues since I doubt all the components I ordered where made in the US or Mexico but for small parts I'm not anticipating much of a cost if any. We'll see. I'll let you know when it arrives if I get dinged for something but I doubt it, I use USPS for shipping from the states all the time, never had a problem before.

I'm a total newb at this but I thought I read somewhere the other day that you can put a resistor across the outer lugs of a 500k pot and make it like a 250k. I forget which value though, someone who knows more can chime in.

I'm new at this stuff too guys, had the same questions about how exactly everything goes. Found this link: http://www.tonepad.com/project.asp?id=35 Hope it helps, it did for me.