#1 resource for Cigar Box Guitars, Free Plans, How-To, Parts & More!

RCA Radio Amp Hack

Here's yet another Radio Amp Hack. Like there's not enough of it already. This one has a little more detail. I already have one in a cardboard storage box that is all set to mount in a guitar case and this will be the second. Both work fine and I'll find time to place them in a case.

This one is from this RCA radio, cassette, cd player. I thought I took a picture of it opened up but I didn't so we will cut to the chase.

.....so looking at the circut board I found everything on one board. Lucky for me I could see that the radio section was on one side and could see that there were only four possible ways to get in and out of it from the amp side. Must be a positive and negative and leaving the AM and FM to the other wires. I figured these four spots were here.....kinda sorta....

These three resistors and the jumper wire were the ones I unsoldered.

These are them that I disconnected from the board.

This is when I tested it. The clothes pin were pinching the wires that were normally connected to turn the tape player on when you pressed the play button. You have to search those wires down when you gut the radio out. The brown wire group came off the tape head where it was connected to a pizeo ground wire to black and the left and right channel wires connected to the red. There is also a selector switch that has to be on the tape setting. I plugged it into the speakers and power source and found the volume turned up. Nice feedback.

...so then I just scored the board like you would formica and snapped the dang thing off. This is a hack at it's best.

I hacked up the case with a hand saw to get it to look like this. The battery holder and wall outlet power supply as one unit. This is twelve volts here for me to use as I please. Its put away now till I'm ready to use it in a build.

Hope this info can help anyone that wants to try this.

0 members like this

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Hillbilly Luthiers on January 16, 2012 at 9:00am

I am really new at this. I've been building guitars for about a year now but i wanted a little low watt practice amp to carry out and about. I had this old Sharp tape and radio player that i gutted. I have tried numerous options. There was a external mic jack that i pulled off and soldered my 1/4 jack to... that didn't work. i tried running it through the antena setup... that didn't work. now i guess from what this is saying i need to track down the play button wires but i also noticed that there is a positive and negative power for the tape deck as well. are those wires involved or is it simply just the play button. If so is there a positive and negative for that in most cases? Please advise

Permalink Reply by Corbie on January 16, 2012 at 1:02pm

Hi Devon.....I'm new here too.....ha.......so what I say may or may not work for you. Luck has been on my side with poken' around these radios and mostly have found they are basic within reason. I learn something new almost every time I or someone else opens up these things but I think if you have a good working radio we can get it up and running. Post a picture of the guts of your radio, maybe I can help.

I found that I couldn't get a mike going on one of mine so I gave up........but after fooling with one of mine the back side had phono jacks. I tried those but it was less than weak. I put an old phono pre amp that I had and it works great. Maybe your mike jack needs a pre amp. Also I would think that the mike was intended to use on the tape player which means it needs to be set on rec or at least play to get it to work. If it doesn't just smash the radio into little tiny bits.......what am I saying....that;'s wrong. Give it up on the mike entry and try going the tape head route or the volume control. There is enough info to get started from this Vintage Radio Amp Group.

I tried to leave as much info along with my photos on my page here at CBN so maybe if you didn't check them out then take a peek at them.

Let me know what you came up with and let us know. If it doesn't work don't smash it up..........send it to me!

Permalink Reply by Hillbilly Luthiers on January 17, 2012 at 3:53am

I will certainly give it another try tonight with the tape head side of things and see what happens. This might not be the ideal radio for the job. I'll post pics just as soon as i can. Thanks

Permalink Reply by Wade on January 19, 2012 at 12:34pm

That looks similiar in size and style to the one I hacked. I wonder how difficult it would be to take the guts out and put it in a square cigar box?

Permalink Reply by Corbie on January 19, 2012 at 3:17pm

Wade........ The only thing I see with a few of mine that the some of the boards are pretty long and the volume control maybe in a awkward position.I can always remove it and place it where I want. I'm saving those odd ones to be mounted inside a guitar case, at least that's my plan. The others I have have much shorter boards like this RCA. So far the one I took out of a Panasonic was just the amp board with plugs for all the components. That one I'm sure will fit inside a cigar box. Hope it works out for you.

Permalink Reply by Pete Turner on September 6, 2013 at 11:13am