Wow, way cool!  Any guess on how many watts this thing puts out?  I'm thinking this might be a good winter break project for me :-)

Can we see a schematic?  I've never done an apollo booster.

Quote from: willy1usa on October 08, 2006, 07:30:13 AM
Also, I use the 3 pin 1/4" jacks, wire the 9V battery to the 3rd pin, so when they plug in, it powers up. That eliminates the need for a switch. Most of your stomp boxes are wired this way.

Cool, thats how I always wire my stompboxes as well.  It just makes sense.

Sure.  First, do you know how to solder?  Make sure you have a decent soldering gun, then gather all the components needed to make the little gem.  If you have a problem reading the schematic, feel free to ask us what stuff means.  We'll start with that, and we can answer questions as you go along.

Quote from: trevize on October 06, 2006, 02:07:24 PM
ps: the lm386 should be able to have an output of 6v in 8ohm.

Would it be too much for a lm3886 amp?

http://www.ssguitar.com/index.php?topic=325

This is really great guys, I'd love to see some build reports of this version.  And excellent layout trevize!

Cool, now what about the bypass cap?  You said you used a .1uF between the +/-  Is that the +/- as in power, or signal?

Throw a cap in front of it to block some lows.  Try a .1uF and then try bigger for more bass and smaller for less bass.

Must be a poor ground inside the chassis and/or one of the two power leads got stripped and is touching somewhere.

Yeah I am.  But first its going straight into my guitar so it will be infront of any amp haha.  I have used a little gem as a preamp with great results on my chipamp though.  So I'm sure this will work well.  I'm thinking for the version I'm putting on my chipamp I will put a 3 band EQ ahead of it.

Is this what you meant willy?

I was confused about where to put the bypass cap, so its not in there, where would that go?

And for people that don't know, the pins are numbered like this on a LM386:

1-XX-8
2-XX-7
3-XX-6
4-XX-5

PDF loads fine for me and I'm on a mac.  OS X 10.4.7

As far as the chip getting hot, sounds like a short to me, I would double check you don't have any stray solders or anything shorting it out.

Cool.  Sounds like what I want in my guitar.  I was going to mount a LPB-1 circuit in there, but this would be even cooler.  I love the LM386 chip :-)

Wow, this is great.  Could you draw up a quick schematic possibly?  If you don't/can't/won't I probably will make an attempt later and see if I can get it right.  I'd love to have this in the wiki, and I would like to test it some.  I used my little gem as a preamp for my amp a few times (both my dean markley, and my LM3886 setup) with good results, but I was afraid of it hurting stuff.  I did some research and found the voltage levels should be ok for the amp, but was worried about amps.  Since you've had good luck with it, it makes me wonder.  I'd love to see a solid LM386 preamp put together with 3 band EQ.  It's something I'm considering working on.

Nope, no problem.  The transformer can go anywhere as far as that goes.  As far as safety...well, thats a judgement call on your part.  In fact, most of the hum is introduced by components being too close to the transformer, so as far as hum goes you'll be better off with it outside the case.