The Steel Guitar Forum

I have built a 5E3 and a 5F2-A which are really awesome tube amps and fun projects that I learned a ton doing! I am looking for another project and am really interested in these cheap 2X50W or 2X100W class D amp boards (under20$).

I have never built anything solid state, but I have been reading up and these seem like a perfect match for the amp in a box pedals, which could be built right into a small chassis with the power amp. Sounds fun and much cheaper than a tube amp build. I haven't priced everything out, but a small tube amp build will cost at least around $500 so this should be cheap in comparison. I can scrounge a speaker and build a cabinet.

Just curious if there are any other DIYers here

Here is a video of one someone made with TPA3118 board ($8.99) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KIgOV0QR_s
I am thinking of using something like the Junior Barnyard or Joyo American Sound as a preamp.

I am also curious as to what people have done. I would love to put a princeton reverb preamp section in front of a 200W Class D power amp. (It would be my take on a DIY half n half).

There are a bunch of pedalboard powered amps available, if you want to just try it out before committing. Bring your preamp signal into the effects return of, say a Quilter Interblock (available cheap).

I imagine a tube preamp into something like this would be pretty stout, tone wise

Ken Morgan wrote:There are a bunch of pedalboard powered amps available, if you want to just try it out before committing. Bring your preamp signal into the effects return of, say a Quilter Interblock (available cheap).

I imagine a tube preamp into something like this would be pretty stout, tone wise

I have a Superblock which is pretty amazing and probably hard to improve upon. This is one of the reasons I got it. It is pretty easy to throw a couple pedals together and you have basically the same thing as I am describing. Not much left to DIY. Basically I want to build the preamp and put it all together in a way that resembles an old school tube amp. I am also interested in the little 1/2W RUBY amp designs for experimenting with solid state. I found a thread where a guy built a Fender Deluxe preamp in front of the Ruby using JFETS instead of tubes. He A/B'd the real thing vs the RUBY and fooled a bunch of folks. Unfortunately he deleted the schematic he came up with.

There are tons of ideas here. Ultimately I love tinkering with stuff and not sure where this will lead if anywhere. These little boards are really enticing. In a way it isn't amp building, it is assembling. I am on the Telecaster DIY Amp forum and the very mention of SS gets the tube police barking at your heals. I posted here, because the steel community seems to have embraced SS long ago. Tubes are the standard for rich tone, but I think SS has some real advantages and rich tones are obviously possible. From what I understand all the gain has to come from the pre-amp in class D because the power section sounds terrible when it distorts. This site has a ton of cool info http://www.runoffgroove.com/articles.html

Here is a guy who built a battery powered rig for his family band.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHCVVU5ealw

Have you looked at a Frog pedal? You can get the PCB board.

Bud Angelotti wrote:Have you looked at a Frog pedal? You can get the PCB board.

Those look pretty interesting. Lots of options for preamps. I want to stick with SS for this though.

Okay I finally found the info I have been looking for. It seems there are lots of folks over in the pedal building world doing this. The TPA3118 60W mono board seems to be a favorite. For under $10.00 you get a cheap platform to play around with preamp circuits.
https://forum.pedalpcb.com/threads/tpa3 ... 015/page-6