Cigarette Tin Amp


We’re a little confused: [xXxMrCarlosxXx] built an amp out of a cigarette tin and calls it a Mobile Oppression Unit, but we thought all mobile oppression came in the form of giant, invincible crab-shaped palaces. In any case, or more specifically, in a repurposed Lucky Strikes case, he used an mp3 player, some speakers from a garage sale, and a bread board packing an LM1877N-9 chip “optimized for loudness” to construct a great-looking, compact boom box. Check out his Flickr stream at the read link and begin oppressing your neighbors with sheer volume today.

7 thoughts on “Cigarette Tin Amp

  1. I counter with this: http://xkcd.com/368/
    (Although modified a bit…)

    What would one use this for, unless it’s sole purpose IS to “oppress” people with loud music..
    I wonder if this, or similar, could be used in conjunction with an iPod mod I had seen about taking the audio from the DAC, before it went through the internal amps, to achieve higher sound quality…

  2. the only thing I see wrong with this design is that those speakers have magnets in them, and if you were to keep a HDD-based mp3 player (creative, zune, ipod, etc), you’d probably end up wrecking the internal hard drive, would you not?

  3. jaket: Doubtful. Magnets around hard drives, in my experience, aren’t as dangerous as you are led to believe. Hell, my last computer case had the case speaker positioned right under the hard drive. Damn thing went right over that magnet many, many times…got suck to that magnet many, many times…and I never lost any data from it. And it was a damn powerful magnet too. It’d suck a screwdriver to it from several inches away.

    As for portable media players…I accidentally put my ipod right on top of a hard drive magnet once and it survived. Though I wouldn’t really recommend that…lol

  4. @#1 It is a 2W chip so it won’t be that loud.

    When they say “optimized for loudness” I think that means LF boost. Those speakers likely need the tweeters to fill in the upper end.

    I like the use of the tin as I just hate paying for enclosures.

  5. Agreed, magnets would be the least of worries in this design. I would say the biggest problem with this project is the flimsy enclosure he chose to use. It would cause a horrible box effect with it resonating horribly.

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