& Someone Slap Biff

Okay, here is my tube amp.

That’s a Firefly PCB I bought on Ebay. In retrospect, I wish I had used a generic PCB, so I could arrange stuff however I wanted. But this is much faster and less intimidating.

Here’s how it looked when I started.

Here it is a day or two later.

The white thing is a sheet of aluminum with a template glued to it with 3M spray adhesive. The Internet is amazing. I printed out a Firefly build guide and glued this page to the metal. After that, it was just a matter of drilling and cutting. As of this moment, the paper is off, the holes are drilled, the power cord hole has been cut, and the adhesive has been removed. It turns out the adhesive doesn’t REALLY come off all that well with denatured alcohol or acetone. Brake part cleaner is the way to go.

Cutting out the sheet on the table saw was pretty terrifying. Perhaps I need to rethink that method. You need fingers to play the guitar.

I’m already unhappy with this amp! It turns out you can make one that’s even less powerful. It’s called a “Murder One,” and the designer put the schematic on the web, so any idiot (not naming names here) can download it and make the amp.

The Murder One is about the size of a miniature cereal box, with a tube or two sticking out of the side. THAT is small.

I’m only starting to realize how badly most guitarists get ripped off. They go to Guitar Center and see 40-watt tube amps, and they think, “Man, is that the biggest I can afford?” Then they take them home and find out they’re so loud they can literally cause partial deafness. Not only that; they can’t make good sounds at comfortable sound levels. So people end up with big, expensive amps that are nearly useless in a home setting.

The market for small amps should be huge. Every guitarist needs one, except for those who are already deaf. I guess people are just too ignorant to want them. I certainly was.

I’ve read that you can drive two 4×12 speaker cabinets with one of these tiny amps. Can that possibly be right? The term “4×12” means four twelve-inch speakers.

I love working on this thing. It’s so much easier than building a guitar. Making electronic devices is not hard, if you have a schematic. Making the wooden parts is what sucks.

It should be up and running by Tuesday. I receive the remaining electronic parts tomorrow, and I should have the wooden stuff done sometime Monday. I’ll let you know how it works.

I am well on my way to becoming a mad scientist. I feel like I should build a guy with scissors for hands. Or a Delorean that will take me back to 1985, so I can somehow prevent Lady Gaga and American Idol from happening. Or maybe I could go back to 1975 and abort rap. And disco.

I’ll tell you how bad it is. I accidentally ordered two pineapple-sized 0.22mF Orange Drop capacitors for this thing, instead of 0.022mF. Looking through my capacitor collection, I found I had THREE spares. Same brand. Same everything. I thought I had failed to order 1N4007 diodes, so I looked through my diode drawer. Yes, I have a diode drawer. I managed to find a 1N4007 in there before realizing the new ones were in the stuff that’s coming Monday.

If civilization collapses, my garage will be a pretty good place to hole up. Unfortunately, it’s taken. And I have enough ammunition to create a very discouraging crescent of bodies around the doors. Not that I would do that. On account of I am all holy and whatnot.

Ps. 37:4!