Description
MICRO is our smallest guitar amp!
It can purr or roar.
Amps this size are often called a “cigar box amp” because many hobbyists and builders mount them in wooden cigar boxes or humidors. BUT… you can mount MICRO in any kind of enclosure with or without a speaker, as a stand-alone amplifier, or as a combo amp.
MICRO is designed to run off 9V to 16V and can be battery-powered, although a battery won’t last too long driving MICRO to its maximum power. – better to use an adapter or power supply. At 9V, MICRO provides 8V peak-to-peak output, providing 2W peak into 8-ohms or 4W peak into 4-ohms. Play MICRO through a full-size cabinet and you will need hearing protection !
Most cigar box amps use integrated circuits, but MICRO is fully discrete, allowing a wide variety of part types to be used. This gives the hobbyist more freedom to customise MICRO to suite their personal aesthetic. MICRO‘s three controls allow a wide variety of clean to distorted tones and accommodates any input from a raw peizo pickup to the hottest dynamic.
The component-supplied forms use low-noise metal-film resistors, high-quality film and electrolytic capacitors, 16mm pots, and selected semiconductors. At 9V and an 8-ohm speaker, no heat sinking is required, but for continuous clipping into 4-ohms and for higher voltages, a heat sink is recommended. Bolting the output transistors to the metal chassis will suffice as a heat sink, if one uses a metal box instead of a a wooden one.
MICRO is available in three forms:
MICRO-PCB is just the printed circuit board and notes
MICRO-COMP is the PCB plus all components that go on the PCB, and notes
MICRO-BLT is assembled and tested, and includes notes
PCB size: 2.2″ x 1.8″ 56 x 46mm
height with components: 1.2″ 31mm
