I’m thinking a bit of gain/drive too

Any chip in particular?

Bonus if 5v or 9v

Jfet or other high impepedance preamp. Jfets are getting hard to find though. J201 is almost gone, MPF102 is getting rare. You could use a TL072 or OPA2134 opamp.

Then you need an amplifier. LM386 is the standard first project that fits in an altoids tin and provides .5 watt from a 9V battery. Googe "noisy cricket" or "little gem" schematic.

Also check out https://www.sound-au.com/p-cat.htm#mus , he's got the best audio projects on the net. Check out his preamp shematics for the guitar amps.

Here, I googled it for you. This type of stuff is what I do as a hobby.

>>2602203 >>2602201



Do you recommend any books?

I’ve looked at the lm386. My plan is for it to go to a powered speaker rather than a pair of speakers. The speaker already has its own amp in it but it’s not very loud when using the guitar, and it’s a lot louder when playing music. Why is that? Is it Ok to stack two amps together in sequence? Will it be too noisy?

What I mean is it’s more like an effects pedal but also has an amp in it too. So: 

Input -> fx preamp -> amp -> output 

Also, going to use a Bluetooth module with a mixer for backing tracks. 



Right now I think I’m just going to use pre-made modules rather than electrical components and in the future I will put it all onto one pcb

>>2602193 (OP)

I got some plans for a 12v 10watt amp laying around somewhere, built it out of shit i had laying around so it needs some really specific components to get the required output power and drive sound. It starts breaking up about half way to full loudness and gets both louder and more distorted with higher volume settings, in a really dynamic and rough way.

you need a high impedance input

if you already have a powered speaker you could get away with just buying a RAT and running it into the the speaker.

What is a RAT? I’m getting pictures of a literal rat when I look it up

look up "RAT guitar pedal"

These are my results

I’m looking to make something rather than buy

ProCo RAT guitar pedal. It's the only distortion pedal I've ever liked.

This is the bare minimum you need, then. If this is still too quiet you need something more complex. Look up the RAT schematic.



Honestly, you don't sound like you know what you're doing at all. Which is understandable, everyone needs explained what's a preamp, amp, and loudspeaker at some point. Just try to commit this stuff to memory and internalize it.

Oops forgot the simplified schematic. If you buy/build a RAT you won't need this.

I’m going to use an LM386.
