If you read earlier, I mentioned that we were still playing with our little amp - swapping a few components to see what happened and generally trying to make the design a lot neater and all that. This, we're still doing off and on, but I'm guessing that not for much longer. I think we're pretty much there.
For the record, the prototypes sound pretty cool - lovely clear 'tweedy' tones to start with, and responsively overdrivable as you increase the volume, all the way into fuzzy oblivion.
Or something like that.
We are chuffed though as what we really wanted to do was find a way to avoid the immediate fuzziness of some of the small amps - like the Smokey - which although great in their own right, are kind of one-trick-pony-limiting, especially if you want to plug something in with a piezo pickup, like a Cigar Box Guitar.
Close to our hearts and all that.
The next step though (once I finally accept that there isn't a better transistor or resistor to be used on the mush of the earth) is to put the little thing into a box and see how we go from there.
I think I said before that all of our amps will be numbered, and this will be numero uno, as it were, so it is going to be tricky to know whether we should try and sell it and break our duckbilled-cherry, or whether we keep it and move on to number two.
Other than the amps, the R&D continues in different directions. We have some fun/cool add-ons that will be scattered sparingly across the amps, and then we're looking at a pedal or two as well - again, unique in some way, and I really can't see them being in Hammonds etc. to start with anyway. There are also designs down for a piezo pickup/pre-amp that will be cool for the CBG builders too. So plenty to think about.
Still, just figured you might be interested, now that we're in a double-digit readership.
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