Solid State Guitar Amp Forum | DIY Guitar Amplifiers

I've built a 12v Ruby amp and have been playing around with it over the last several weeks.  I've noticed at medium to high volume and gain settings that I'm getting some unwanted background noise and was hoping the wise folks here could help me identify the source.

When I strike a chord, it will first ring out clear and then as the chord decays I get this nasty crackling sound in the background along with dying chord.  I'm not sure if I'm just overloading the 386 chip and getting some crackly distortion (seems a little odd at only medium gain and volume settings) or if its possibly coming from a bad speaker connection?  I'm running the Ruby into a custom 2x8 speaker cab I built.  Maybe I need a better speaker cable to connect them with?

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

Please connect the amp to a different speaker before considering the electronics.  That wil tell you if it is indeed the electronics or just a speaker with a rubbing voice coil.

try lowering the supply voltage to 9Volts, 12 volts is the max supply voltage for most LM386 chips , it is possible that you have a bad wire or solder joint, or speaker, however I would lower the supply voltage 1st. 9 volt batteries are cheap.

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