Solid State Guitar Amp Forum | DIY Guitar Amplifiers

Hello everyone,
Getting back into guitars and amps after 30 years. I discovered Cigar Box Guitars about a year ago and this new hobby has renewed my interest in guitars and electronics. I've been collecting components and information for a while now and and getting ready to build my own amp. I still remember some of the electronics theory I learned in college 30 years ago and am trying to relearn some of what I've forgotten.
I've built a couple lm386 based amps and I am happy with them, now I'm ready to bump it up a notch. I found a 1967 issue of Popular Electronics with plans for a 22 watt amp and would like to work up to building it.
The pic is of one of my later builds along with my amp.

Well cool, some of those old Poptronics projects weren't bad.  What issue or issues that year were the amp you want to build?  We can look at back issues in the Popular Electronics archive, or you could post the schematic here directly.

The project article is almost 50 years old, and the industry has changed.  The basic circuit probably works OK, but we may notice a thing or two it needs.  MY major concern is parts that were common then may not be now.  I would bet my lunch money there are some transistors types that would fit right in there, but work better in the amp.  Also, you may find old values like 25uf caps which today would be less common than 22uf caps, and the difference wouldn't matter, except the newer parts are a lot easier to find.

Thanks for the interest Enzo,
It's a simple amp with 5 transistors. I built it on a breadboard and it sort of worked (lots of distortion). I'm going to use this build as a learning  project.
I'll start a new thread with more details and plenty of questions.

Hi cbg Rick, welcome back to the fold.


Oh I do like these scratch instruments and amps, creativity in action.

As Enzo says, post the circuit, or link to, and we'll drag it right up to the current minute.   :dbtu: