I still know how to solder!
I made one of these: CMoy Pocket Amplifier. I didn’t take any pictures of the progress except the one I twitpic’ed. I have since fitted it in a cut-down cookie tin with a pair of 9V batteries. Lemmie tell you what: this little sucker is freakin amazing. One, it can get DAMN loud. On a true, unamplified line-out, I can put the dial around 2 outta 10 before my ears threaten to bleed. Unfortunately, my pre-iPhone universal dock’s line out turns into an amplified headphone out, so I’m getting a doubly-amped signal (I think) running through the headphone amp, but it still sounds AMAZING. Bass hits are definitely fuller & deeper (awwww yeah). On a few live albums I have (Stephen Lynch’s Superhero comes to mind), I can actually hear the back-wall echo from the theater, and when audience members talk, I could swear it’s actually people physically behind me talking. For about $50 in parts, it’s SO worth it.
That all said, I’m going to make version 2. Here are my goals:
- Bigger power supply capacitors for even better bass handling
- Slightly bigger case so I have more room to work during assembly and possible storage for extra cables, etc
- Make battery power an option, maybe, where primary power is via wall wart
- Two complete implementations of this (for left & right channel, but using pots that do two separate lines each)
Yeah, awesome. I really want to get started on it, but first I’m going to tackle converting a computer ATX power supply into a bench supply with banana plugs and everything. Before even that, I need to wait for my shipments from Electronic Goldmine (piles of random components) and Adafruit (diy Atmel programmer kit) to show up. At this point, I’m looking at least a month between now and starting on headphone amp v2. We’ll see. I still need to set up a solid station to do the soldering with power & lights, which means I need to break out my electrical tools again and move outlets around. Fun!
