Beautiful tube amp uses a TV tube

tube-amp-i

Most audio tube amps we see use common tubes – usually a 12AX7 for the preamp and one of the more common power tubes such as an EL34.[Daniel], on the other hand, decided to build his own audio tube amp with a 13EM7, a tube originally used for a television’s vertical oscillator. The resulting project is a wonderful stereo amp … Read the rest

Making a phono preamp for a first electronics project

Nearly everyone’s first electronic project is something that blinks a LED. There are a million ways to go about this ‘Hello World’ project of electronic design; 555 timers, microcontrollers, or maybe even discrete components if you’re really cool. When [miceuz] was asked by a friend to help with his first electronic project he eschewed the usual blinking LED project and … Read the rest

Log guitar uses tube as a bridge, actually is the blues

In the never ending quest to replicate the tone of depression-era blues records, [Valve Child] managed to build the most backwoods guitar ever seen.

The body of [Valve Child]‘s slide guitar was taken from the limb of a red gum tree felled during a wind storm. After taking a chainsaw, router, and sander to the guitar, [Valve] sealed it … Read the rest

[Dino's] JFET guitar preamp with piezo pickup

This week, with a little help from a Roomba, [Dino] built a guitar pickup and preamp that sounds marvelous. A pickup takes vibrations from the guitar and turns them into an electrical signal which can then be amplified and broadcast. He grabbed a long-dead Roomba which has slowly but surely been donating its organs for his weekly projects. After plucking … Read the rest

Quick and easy audio preamp

npn_transistor_audio_preamp

The most recent installment of [Dino Segovis’] Hack a Week covers the construction of a simple NPN transistor audio preamp. Some time ago, he built a small audio amplifier using an LM386 which worked well, but didn’t quite get his music as loud as he would like it. He decided to build a preamp to complement his amplifier, and … Read the rest

Build a tetrahedral ambisonic microphone

[Dan Hemingson's] been refining a design for building a tetrahedral ambisonic recording system. This is a set of four microphones used to record audio that can later be mixed down for a three-dimensional listening experience. His goal is an easy and inexpensive build while maintaining the highest fidelity standards possible. Lucky for us he’s made a set of extremely Read the rest

Tube preamp with a dazzling wood case

It’s been a while since we’ve looked in on the world of vacuum tube audio equipment. [Bruce] just finished documenting a tube preamp he built. He actually made a couple of these with slightly different cases but they use the same circuit design. We found his discussion of common errors made when tying into ground quite interesting. It seems

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