I don't see a ton of interest for SS amps on this forum, but I figured some might find this interesting. I got the idea for this after reading about these cheap little 60W power amps and all the positive reviews of people making pedal amps out of them. I was looking for a simple, light SS amp to put in my 15" cabinet and this seemed like it could work. The basic recipe is preamp of your choice + buffer + TPA3118= guitar amp.
I had been lusting for a JJ-150 pedal and lucked into getting a layout from someone who had cloned it. I first built it as a pedal and loved it so I figured it might actually work for this project. The buffer I chose is basically an Electro Harmonix LPB-1. There is a video of someone using this straight into a TPA amp with good results, and its a simple circuit with free layouts available.
The power supply is just a thrift store 19v laptop power supply with a cheap buck converter to convert it to 9v for the preamp. The chassis is 2 pieces of 2" aluminum angle screwed together. On a whim I added a "dying battery simulator" where the presence knob is thinking I can use this to kill the voltage to the preamp or possibly wire in a different compressor or limiter type circuit in the future. I wanted to wire it all up so it has a vintage tube amp look, so I used an eyelet board instead of pcb or veroboard. I am sure I have less than $100 bucks in this project and that includes and extra TPA amp and buck converter plus a bunch of other extras for future builds. It weighs about 3Lbs.
I put it together half not expecting it to even work, and boy was I wrong! It sounds absolutely amazing! The amp is super quiet and I like the sound as much as my other amps the 5f2-a and the tweed Deluxe. This was a less stressful build and so cheap I figured why not try it! It goes from very brite and clean to super dark and dirty with a huge range in between and it has a very natural sounding breakup. I know some will not believe, but that's OK! The presence knob is wired to a 10k pot which doesn't completely kill the voltage, but takes it way down into super saggy breakup. I love this effect on this preamp and I don't see a reason to change it at this point. I think this platform could be used to build any kind of amp someone would want, by just changing the preamp circuit.
I had been lusting for a JJ-150 pedal and lucked into getting a layout from someone who had cloned it. I first built it as a pedal and loved it so I figured it might actually work for this project. The buffer I chose is basically an Electro Harmonix LPB-1. There is a video of someone using this straight into a TPA amp with good results, and its a simple circuit with free layouts available.
The power supply is just a thrift store 19v laptop power supply with a cheap buck converter to convert it to 9v for the preamp. The chassis is 2 pieces of 2" aluminum angle screwed together. On a whim I added a "dying battery simulator" where the presence knob is thinking I can use this to kill the voltage to the preamp or possibly wire in a different compressor or limiter type circuit in the future. I wanted to wire it all up so it has a vintage tube amp look, so I used an eyelet board instead of pcb or veroboard. I am sure I have less than $100 bucks in this project and that includes and extra TPA amp and buck converter plus a bunch of other extras for future builds. It weighs about 3Lbs.
I put it together half not expecting it to even work, and boy was I wrong! It sounds absolutely amazing! The amp is super quiet and I like the sound as much as my other amps the 5f2-a and the tweed Deluxe. This was a less stressful build and so cheap I figured why not try it! It goes from very brite and clean to super dark and dirty with a huge range in between and it has a very natural sounding breakup. I know some will not believe, but that's OK! The presence knob is wired to a 10k pot which doesn't completely kill the voltage, but takes it way down into super saggy breakup. I love this effect on this preamp and I don't see a reason to change it at this point. I think this platform could be used to build any kind of amp someone would want, by just changing the preamp circuit.
