I still know how to solder!

ross — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 19:28:45 +0000

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!

Ramblings, v.2 » soldering

I still know how to solder!