Dave (dnewma04) asked me for some information about this amp. You can't add pics to a private message, so I thought I'd just toss the info in a thread. I had taken it with me to last year's AKFest just for fun, and had a blast taking it to different rooms and trying it with different sets of speakers.
Dave, sorry it took a few days to reply to your request, but believe it or not I couldn't remember where I put it!:withstpd:
Please understand, I never intended this to be a mahogany-and-brass work of art, it was simply a project for class. During the course of the semester, the class builds a series of little kits, strictly for soldering practice for the students who've never touched a soldering iron, and then for troubleshooting practice...for the students who've never touched a soldering iron. This particular kit was intended to be one of three parts. First, a little power supply, then a small signal generator that could display waveforms on a scope, and finally a little audio amp so you could hear the tones from the sig gen.
Well, I took one look at the specs on this little mono amp and went "whoa!!". So I asked the teacher (with whom I've developed a bit of a relationship, since we're exactly the same age) if I could have another amp kit. "What do you want that for? Stereo?". I replied "You haven't lived till you've listened to test tones in stereo!". He laughed and gave me another kit.
I put the two together in a simple plastic box, added speaker connectors, a standard 1/8" stereo jack, a standard DC input jack so I could run it off one of the 56 old laptop wallwarts I have, and away we go. I attached the two individual circuit boards back to back by their heatsinks, and attached them to the bottom of the box with some simple machine screws. I didn't include a volume control or on/off switch since I just planned on demonstrating it in class using an iPod, CD player, or some other source with a switch and volume control.
Here's what caught my attention:
3.5 w/ch RMS into 4 ohms, 2 w/ch RMS into 8 ohms.
20 Hz - 20 kHz @ -3dB.
0.05% THD @ 1w/1kHz.
86 dB S/N (A weighted)
The kit is a Velleman K4001. You can get them everywhere on the net. Here's a place that has them on sale:
http://www.designnotes.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=K4001&Category_Code=auha
I brought a pair of Paradigm Mini-Monitors to class, put on Muddy Waters, and blew everybody away. Students and teachers were coming in from classrooms on both sides!
These certainly won't produce room-filling volume with low sensitivity speakers, but they most definitely will provide normal listening volume with amazing fidelity. I tried to shove some Indignias pretty hard, and the amp will start to clip. However, hook up some 90+ dB speaks and it's jaw-dropping. I put the iPod in the pics just for scale, but the dock is line-out, so you couldn't use the dock because it bypasses the volume control. If you wanted to get fancy, add a 47k stereo pot with an on/off switch, nicer box, and you're good to go!
The cost of the two kits, plus the other bits and pieces is close to what you'd pay for an original T-amp, but I have one and I really think this little guy sounds a lot better. Plus, I think it's a lot cooler, and it's certainly a lot more fun!
Hope you like!
Clay
Dave, sorry it took a few days to reply to your request, but believe it or not I couldn't remember where I put it!:withstpd:
Please understand, I never intended this to be a mahogany-and-brass work of art, it was simply a project for class. During the course of the semester, the class builds a series of little kits, strictly for soldering practice for the students who've never touched a soldering iron, and then for troubleshooting practice...for the students who've never touched a soldering iron. This particular kit was intended to be one of three parts. First, a little power supply, then a small signal generator that could display waveforms on a scope, and finally a little audio amp so you could hear the tones from the sig gen.
Well, I took one look at the specs on this little mono amp and went "whoa!!". So I asked the teacher (with whom I've developed a bit of a relationship, since we're exactly the same age) if I could have another amp kit. "What do you want that for? Stereo?". I replied "You haven't lived till you've listened to test tones in stereo!". He laughed and gave me another kit.
I put the two together in a simple plastic box, added speaker connectors, a standard 1/8" stereo jack, a standard DC input jack so I could run it off one of the 56 old laptop wallwarts I have, and away we go. I attached the two individual circuit boards back to back by their heatsinks, and attached them to the bottom of the box with some simple machine screws. I didn't include a volume control or on/off switch since I just planned on demonstrating it in class using an iPod, CD player, or some other source with a switch and volume control.
Here's what caught my attention:
3.5 w/ch RMS into 4 ohms, 2 w/ch RMS into 8 ohms.
20 Hz - 20 kHz @ -3dB.
0.05% THD @ 1w/1kHz.
86 dB S/N (A weighted)
The kit is a Velleman K4001. You can get them everywhere on the net. Here's a place that has them on sale:
http://www.designnotes.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=K4001&Category_Code=auha
I brought a pair of Paradigm Mini-Monitors to class, put on Muddy Waters, and blew everybody away. Students and teachers were coming in from classrooms on both sides!
These certainly won't produce room-filling volume with low sensitivity speakers, but they most definitely will provide normal listening volume with amazing fidelity. I tried to shove some Indignias pretty hard, and the amp will start to clip. However, hook up some 90+ dB speaks and it's jaw-dropping. I put the iPod in the pics just for scale, but the dock is line-out, so you couldn't use the dock because it bypasses the volume control. If you wanted to get fancy, add a 47k stereo pot with an on/off switch, nicer box, and you're good to go!
The cost of the two kits, plus the other bits and pieces is close to what you'd pay for an original T-amp, but I have one and I really think this little guy sounds a lot better. Plus, I think it's a lot cooler, and it's certainly a lot more fun!
Hope you like!
Clay
