Rongge

I quite like the look of the Noisy Cricket Mk II amp from Beavis Audio (http://www.beavisaudio.com/projects/NoisyCricket/), and I happened to have a wooden box lying around that looked like it would work great as a 6” speaker cabinet, hence today’s project. (EDIT: Actually it turns out the Mk I and the MK II are the same. The only difference is the PCB design, and since I'm using veroboard, that's irrelevant.) The Noisy Cricket is a little 1/2 Watt guitar amplifier that fits into a standard Hammond-like enclosure (such as the one I used here: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2013/04/building-modified-ea-tremolo-pedal-on.html). It uses a MPF102 or a 2N5951 transistor as a preamp channel and an LM386 as the power amp. It’s also powered from a standard 9v guitar pedal power supply (or even a battery). What’s not to like? As I usually do, I’m going to use Veroboard for this. A few people have already done layouts for it, and I decided to go with this one: Which can be found here: htt...

Just like everything else on this vintage Hofner Colorama II, the electronics have been treated badly and need some attention. By “badly” I mean that they have been left in a damp or wet environment and the pots are scratchy or cut out completely. The output jack also needs to make better contact. This can hopefully all be fixed with the help of some electrical contact cleaner, but first I’m going to remove all the parts from the pickguard. This isn’t strictly necessary, but since I’m restoring the whole guitar, and the pickguard also needs attention, this is the route I’m going to take. Firstly, here’s the whole pickguard/electronics assembly. As mentioned in another post, the beauty of the Colorama is how the entire electronics circuit is attached to the pickguard and can be lifted out in one go: Here's how it looks from behind: The knobs are removed, revealing some rather disturbing evidence of damp. Check out that rust! Rather that turn the whole pot by accident when I’m unscre...