[Ynze] has built an audio amplifier that looks and sounds great. His amplifier uses a National Instruments (now TI) LM3886 Overture series 68 Watt power amp. The LM3886 places [Ynze’s] amp squarely in the “Gainclone” catagory. Gainclone or Chipamp are terms long used by the DIY community to describe audio amps based upon highly integrated semiconductor amplifiers. The Gainclone name stems from the original Gaincard audio amplifier sold by 47 labs. The Gaincard used less than $100 USD of parts when it was introduced in 1999. It sounded good enough to command a $3300 USD price tag on the audiophile market. The low parts count and simple construction spawned the audio DIY community to build their own versions of the Gaincard. Hundreds of variants exist now, and wading through the different versions can be a bit of a daunting task. [Ynze] found a basic design that works, and built from there.
One of the interesting things about [Ynze’s] amp, as well as many of the Gainclones, is the fact that they use no circuit board. All wiring is done point to point. resistors are soldered directly to the pins of the amplifier chip. This can be some tricky soldering for beginners, but several PCB kits are available. [Ynze] built his amp in two cases. One case holds the power supply, and the other contains the amplifier itself. [Ynze] is using a large toroid transformer to drop his local 230V mains down to +25V and -25V. The amplifier circuit itself is simple – a few discrete components surround the LM3886 and it’s heat sink. [Ynze] also did some very nice carpentry work on his wood chassis. The resulting amp looks like it’s right out of the 1960’s – but hides 1990’s electronics inside.
