I've been building my Noisy Cricket amp for a while now and have received some real good feedback from folks regarding the tone. It is based on runoffgroove.com's Ruby and adds a tone control and a grit mod. I built about 30 of these for folks and they have been pretty happy with the sound. I have also retired from building for a while (too many projects, too little time).

In order to help folks who want a NC, I've posted a new section on my site that is essentially the "Build Your Own Noisy Cricket" amp. If you have built a Ruby and are looking for some mods, you may get some ideas. If you haven't built a 386-based amp yet, the NC should be a fun project.

Anyway, hope some of you fine folks find it useful:
http://beavisaudio.com/Projects/NoisyCricket/DIY/

Best,
-dano

I've built a couple Ruby practice amps from runoffgroove.com. The Ruby is dirt simple and sounds really good. But the tinkerer in me wants more. Thanks to some great feedback at DIYStompboxes, I'm working to build a ruby that has a simple tone control and a boost. Here are two versions of my schematic. These are NOT YET VERIFIED but I'll update the thread as I make progress.

Noisy Cricket V1 (simple JFET boost and a variation of Mark Hammer's "Stupidly Wonderful Tone Control" + Stock Ruby + Gainy Mod)


Noisy Cricket V2 (boost based on the DOD250 and a tone stack from Aron Nelson + Stock Ruby + Gainy Mod)


Also, during breadboarding I've come across a mod that sounds pretty nice. This one is verified and is really simple: