thanks for the info, Ive almost finished my prototype just gotta build a power supply and then it should be done. i didn't use an 386 because none of the ones i can find work properly, so i used some car amplifier chip amp kit its about 11.5 watts amp sounds pretty good with just the guitar plugged straight in to it.

from what i believe c4 is  switchable to get extra grit.

ill post the voltages soon.

i tried it on 12v power and it sounded much better but it has the same kind of farty sound

Ok, so i built a noisy cricket following the schematic on beavisaudio.com,turned it on and plugged my guitar in it sounded pretty good. but when i turned the volume up and started playing it made this horrible fuzzy sound, same with the gain pot.   when i turned the boost switch on it sounded absolutely terrible . its really hard to describe the sound that it makes. Whenever i play a note it makes the same fuzzy farting sound but it is dead quiet when nothing is being played. I have checked the schematic to my layout and it is all connected fine. i have tried many different speakers and it all sounds the same

any ideas on how to fix this.

in advance thanks for the help,

im ordering the parts tommorow ill post again when its done. but i only have a 12ax7 and the 12au7 has to come from england so that might take a while.

One day i was looking around the internet for little practice amps with tube preamps. I saw the ruby tubey (but that has too many parts) and i also saw the tube cricket but i could not find a schematic. then i remembered seeing something about a tube boost that runs on 9v called the valve caster.(in case you dont know you can find that here: http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=63479.0

anyway that gave me an idea for a little practice amp like a ruby or noisy cricket. replace the fet input thing (not sure of the propper name) with a valve caster circuit running into the input of an lm386 power amp. Ill post a schem later

my question to you is do you thing this will work.

in advance thanks for the help.
 

thank's for the information spud. that plexitizer looks great but its a bit complicated for a n00b like me maybe one day in the future i will build it. i got lots of other projects going on at the moment.

I'm probably going to get this kit http://www.surplustronics.co.nz/shop/product-FK608.html because it is quite cheap, and build my own power supply from scratch. I think it is the next level up from the one that was suggested. But it might be a while before i can find the time to build this amp. I can't decide between the Thor preamp or the eighteen. When i build it i'll post some pictures and maybe some sound samples.
Thanks for the help everybody