The best £6.99 I've spent in a while!

Ok, so there I was in my local Maplin Electronics shoppe browsing, not for anything in particular when my eyes fell upon something I just couldn't resist-a 1W mono amplifier kit.

I was there, it was there, it had a supply voltage of 4-12V...

Back at home it took around 20 minutes to solder the handfull of discrete components and IC onto the wee PCB, a further 10 minutes to install it into my Harrison 145 and lo, it was become like a dream come true!

No longer need the neighbours worry about The War of the Worlds becoming real at 10pm in the evening for I can truely enjoy a rewarding volume of theremin and 'music to play along to' feed into my headphones.

By the way Fred, I can just imagine you now reading this, shaking your head in dissapointment that I spent seven quid on something I could have built for less than two quid and I have to agree except for one thing...it was just too good not to have AT THAT MOMENT! lol

Just wanted to share :-)

Little amps are great. I used a similar, but cheaper, kit to build a 1/2 watt mono amp for electric guitar practice. I use headphones with it and have to turn down the guitar's volume lest I blow my eardrums out.

I housed it in a jiffy box and run it from four AA cells. I added an LED to remind me to switch it off.

http://s169.photobucket.com/user/gtc_photos/media/Tiny%20amp/05wattamp.jpg.html

"By the way Fred, I can just imagine you now reading this, shaking your head in dissapointment that I spent seven quid on something I could have built for less than two quid and I have to agree except for one thing...it was just too good not to have AT THAT MOMENT! lol " - RoyP

Lol, Roy, I dont think you were silly buying it - To be honest, event though one can buy parts "cheaply", as soon as you start to factor in the circuit board and time, kits are a bargain!

As for Maplin - Well, they can be a real life saver.. My H1 theremins were built into Maplin supplied active speakers - They were cheaper than anyone else, fair quality, but- most important - they could supply me with 16 within a week.. And they gave me a substantial discount.. I could not have even begun to get everything (power supply, good 10W RMS audio power amplifier, Speakers and cabinet for them + the theremin) for the £20 I got them each for..

The thing I hate about Maplin is how they do their SEO - Any component I am looking for, Maplin returns dozens of "hits" - but most of the time they have juast added words for parts they dont stock - I now search excluding Maplin.. They may have what I am looking for, but I cannot waste the time checking all their fraudulant links.. so they lose out!

Fred.