as some of you know, im finishing up my preamp (bosoz), and in the testing phase i realized i dont really have a way to test it down in my shop. im really picky about testing things hundreds of times down in the shop before they even get hooked up to "real" gear.
SO, i decided to toss together a 2-channel amp that i could use exclusively for testing gear. (yes, thats what i said, i built and amp only to be used to test this preamp, get over it). fidelity wasnt an issue, so i wasnt going to build an aleph3 or anything, so i found some old gainclone boards i had made awhile back from an abondoned LM3875 project. i populated them, grabbed some transformers and bridge rectifiers from the parts bin and tossed it in a cool case i found.
the case was the best find. it was from my favorite surplus shop and already had banana jacks, fuse holder, IEC inlet, on/off switch and light! i just drilled for the RCA's and it was done. all the connections (except power) were on the front, which is exactly what i wanted. i wanted it to be a test bench amp that could be easily plugged in.
so, its your basic LM3875 amp, dual mono crammed into that little case. it kinda sounds like ****. really noisy (partly my fault for trying to cram everything into that case), terrible bass and all the other reasons that led to the early termination of a 6-channel gainclone. but it does play music. the best part, its my quickest project to date, started around 6pm, took an hour break for dinner, and finished by 11pm. so, 4 hours total work. my second best is 6 months
as always, here are pictures:
(front)
http://cowanrg.mesanetworks.net/projects/images/shop/amp1.jpg
(back)
http://cowanrg.mesanetworks.net/projects/images/shop/amp2.jpg
SO, i decided to toss together a 2-channel amp that i could use exclusively for testing gear. (yes, thats what i said, i built and amp only to be used to test this preamp, get over it). fidelity wasnt an issue, so i wasnt going to build an aleph3 or anything, so i found some old gainclone boards i had made awhile back from an abondoned LM3875 project. i populated them, grabbed some transformers and bridge rectifiers from the parts bin and tossed it in a cool case i found.
the case was the best find. it was from my favorite surplus shop and already had banana jacks, fuse holder, IEC inlet, on/off switch and light! i just drilled for the RCA's and it was done. all the connections (except power) were on the front, which is exactly what i wanted. i wanted it to be a test bench amp that could be easily plugged in.
so, its your basic LM3875 amp, dual mono crammed into that little case. it kinda sounds like ****. really noisy (partly my fault for trying to cram everything into that case), terrible bass and all the other reasons that led to the early termination of a 6-channel gainclone. but it does play music. the best part, its my quickest project to date, started around 6pm, took an hour break for dinner, and finished by 11pm. so, 4 hours total work. my second best is 6 months
as always, here are pictures:
(front)
http://cowanrg.mesanetworks.net/projects/images/shop/amp1.jpg
(back)
http://cowanrg.mesanetworks.net/projects/images/shop/amp2.jpg