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LM 386 Ampenstein

Started by n9voc, January 21, 2008, 09:42:31 PM

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n9voc

Good Day again!

Thought I'd share a last "Ruby inspired" design with ya-all!

On this post you will find attached page one of two of the "Ampenstein" amplifier I built and current have in use in my living room attached to my computer (but works great as a portable guitar amp!)

Note that the power supply begins with a laptop 'brick" that I had left after a old laptop of mine crashed out that goes into the standard regulator circuit.  You might say this was a "Junkbox Special" because I designed it around the parts I had on hand in my "junkbox" at the time.

If you drop an LM386-4 into the socket, you have an amp with a maximum output of 1 watt. 

I decided that I wanted more "Max power" so I built the circuit shown on post 2 - three LM386 amp chips in parallel, routed to an IC socket that plugs into LM386 socket on the main board below.



With a 5 amp/hour gel cell, this unit can run approximately 10 hours once batteries reach full charge

n9voc

As mentioned above, this is the second part of the "Ampenstein" schematic.

I didn't want to "tear down" the board I had built up  above (it had power supply, Input/output, power amp, headphone amp all on one project board).  To increase the maximum power for the "Ampenstein" from 1 Watt to approximately 3 watts, I built up the below schematic on another project board, connected it to a ribbon cable which had an 8 pin IC socket I soldered onto it.

I pulled the LM386-4 I had in the main board, plugged in the socket/ribbon cable assembly attached to the below board and viola!  I had increased the maximum power out without having to rip the old board apart.  If the power supply is beefy enough, this idea would work for any "Ruby" type amp.  Kind of nutty, but effective!

n9voc

Finally got my digital camera up and working.
Attached is a shot of the front panel of the "Ampenstein" model.  I originally called it the ODE SKOOL #2, but it got renamed after the "enhancement".
Front panel is of sheet aluminum, drilled and painted black - connected to safety ground.