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First Amp Project

Posted on July 12, 2012 at 4:30am 1 Comment 1 Like

Here's the first amp project I did.

It was a ruby circuit from runoffgroove - (great site)

I used the picture version on the site, because I'm not much of an electrical guy at this point.

it makes it a really easy....like a paint by numbers project.

I put the speaker under the lid to protect it when carrying around.

The Samo label matches a guitar I made at the same time, but it's really butt ugly.

I've learned a little bit since i built…

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Dulcilin

Posted on July 11, 2012 at 2:56am 6 Comments 1 Like

Here's something I finished up about a month ago. Started life as a craigslist violin and ended up as a strummer. I was surprised by the really nice tone. The doubled up high D string really adds to it.

The switches are on/offs for an embedded neck and seperate bass side cavity piezo's. Sounds best with both of them on.

The other output is for a really hot humbucker I buried under the wood into the neck. Sounds OK, but upon reflection, the humbucker tone is a little bit of a…

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At 8:56am on July 11, 2012, Low Budget Luthier said…: dont b suprised if u see me build one. i got 3 cheap fiddles

At 3:04pm on July 10, 2012, Rand Moore said…: $5.00 an hour is pretty good. In China, its more like 5 yuan (about 83 cents an hour). So, for me, it's a labor of love and not profit. I need to find a way to smuggle them into the States w/o having to pay big bucks for shipping. In China, I can buy (and have bought) cheap factory ukuleles for about $12.50 U.S. That's what I'm trying to sell against. Not much margin. If I were a real businessman, I'd import to the States cheap Chinese ukes.

-Rand.

At 2:49pm on July 10, 2012, Rand Moore said…: I forgot to mention (other than as a re-entrant string for strumming and clawhammer), the main reason for a 4th string is to give you another string to help you find more notes to form chords. With this is mind, I'm not sure ADAD is the best tuning choice for those whishing to play chords. Need to mix it up a little, like maybe use the high 4 strings from the guitar standard tuning: DGBe; but that will also require a chromatic fretboard. If you are really into chordal music, I'd recommend a 4-string chromatically freted instrument (tenor guitar, baritone uke, uke, etc.) Diatonic is too limited for serious chordal playing... you got only 3 strings and fewer fret per octave to play with. The ADAD tuning is more keeping with the dulcimer playing.

-Rand.

At 12:06pm on July 10, 2012, Rand Moore said…: Hi Jamie Howe,

I haven't actually gotten around to playing with ADAD tuning, which is a natural extension of DAD. I guess because I haven't built a sastifying 4-stringer yet.

I did build one (a 4-stringer paddlebox dulcimer) just before leaving on my anual trip to the States, but was unable to finish it before taking off. So, in September, I can tune it ADAD and let you know how I like it. This new instrument was intended as a test-bed for 4-string tunings, but it has a diatonic fret layout. (Will have to build a second onbe to test out 4-string chromatic tunings.) Likely it will end up being played D-A-dd, but there is room enough on the fretboard to have 4 equally spaced strings with 1cm string separation.

My current interests have turned to a shortened 4th string added to a 3-string stick dulcimer in the same way a 3rd sting was added to a 2-string stick dulcimer (with banjo style drum body) to create the Dulcijo. I like the idea of Clawhammer, and the shorteened string tuned high (rentrant tuning like banjos and ukulleles) allows one to do clawhammer nicely. I also have a 5-stringer paddlebox banjo design which I'd like to build this September. But, actually, I need to limit the experimental builds and hone my skills at building more recognized instruments in an attempt to learn to build something I can readily sell. The wife keeps after me about tuning my hobby into a business.

-Rand.