I just built one of those cigar-box guitar amp kits…
I got the amp in kit form from GuitarFuel, for under forty bucks. It arrived in a couple days, was a very easy build, and I’m still on my first battery.
I’d found a cheap cheap deal on a Danelectro “Fab Echo” - which is their sort of retro-rockabilly slapback & reverb box - so I hacked the guts of it into the amp’s circuit. The results are pretty cool. It’s a toy, but it’s also NOT a toy - it’s a very useful recording tool for certain sounds that you’d be hard-pressed to duplicate otherwise. More on recording with it at this link.
It sounds better with a little gain, but I have a little overdrive box (hand made by guitar tech Tim Jauernig, who’s done some work on my gear over the years) which gives it a little bite. I also did the vocals, with the lovely Mrs. Cloudy supplying a harmony or two.
All the guitar tracks in this video were recorded through the little amp. For me, this video was really an experiment in getting flash animations into Final Cut Pro, and also integrating flash animation with live footage. It was fun, but man, what a tremendous amount of work.
For those into recording, there’s some more detail on getting some big sounds with this tiny amp at this link.
Hey, I love your video, good job! And I love the sound of your little amp. I wanted to ask a couple of questions about the amp, if You don’t mind.
You say you hacked the echo pedal into the amp’s guts. COuld you be a little more specific about how you did that? I can pickup one of those Danelectro gadgets pretty cheap too, and I’m planning on building an amp like yours. As far as electronic know-how goes, I know about enough to get myself in trouble. But if it’s not too complex a deal, I can probably accomplish the job.
Also, I wanted to ask which amp harness your cigar box uses. They seem to have a few rather simple one, with one volume pot stuck on the PC board, and that’s about it. They tell me that have another harness they are out of till Wednesday of this week, the MA3S, which has tone expander circuit in it. Is that the one you used?
Thanx much, and kudos on your video, great job!
Mike Vande
Hey, thanks man -
I used their original circuit for this amp, a tiny PCB board with the knob - after they saw the video they sent me their new one (nice guys!) but I haven’t assembled it yet, looking for a cool box.
The problem with that little one is it ends up being sort of an octopus of wires - I think mine currently has a short in it. the solder lugs are tiny and you have to handle it really gently..
To do the danelectro - well, I’m no electronics whiz - the Dano has two circuit boards; I wired a momentary toggle switch with a short lead where the little electronic footswitch was, and added that to the front of the amp - you need to use a momentary switch as that’s what the footpedal uses, a regular switch has to be cycled to kick in the delay.
And where possible, I soldered shielded wire from the output of the dano to the input of the amp; I think for the input to the dano, I just soldered a piece of guitar cable (with a male jack) to the input jack, and “plugged it in” to the Dano circuit board.
For the dano’s “active” LED, I replaced it with a longer one (the amp kit came with two colors to choose from, I used one of those) and it pokes out of the cigar box, so I have an “echo on” light.
Then I installed the two dano boards into the case, where the two pot shafts could stick out. The pot shafts hold the bigger board to the cigar box - for the smaller board, I made sort of a shim that “clips” it onto the inner wall of the box, and just hot-glued that shim in. There’s a short jumper cable between the two boards, left that as-is.
For power, I was going to try to put one battery in series, but I was in a hurry and just stuck a second battery connector in the box, so the dano has one and the amp has one.
The only problem? The Dano drains the battery if its left plugged in, and a dead-dano won’t pass sound, even when it’s off - when I fix the short I may add a DPDT switch so I can shut off both batteries with one switch. The cigar box amp powers off with the volume knob.
The kit comes with a spot to wire an external speaker jack - I didn’t use that, but my understanding is these things sound pretty awesome through, say, a nice 12″ speaker.
One cool thing I did was record some tracks with a Cascade “fat head” ribbon mic (google it, they’re like $175) - the mic face almost completely covers the speaker - sounded BIG.
I sure wish this was on, on Saturday mornings instead of Josie and The Pussycats! How about a high-res audio version of this one as well? But keep the intro this time.
I’m sure the last thing you’d want to deal with is a weekly 20 minute, but one of these a month would be SuhWheat! I hope you got a nice fee from Danelectro and the Cigar Box Amp people.
Are the pickups stock on this one? I have one without the whammy bar and I love the sound, but something’s buzzing near the neck pickup.
I sure hope there’s more to come.
on the dano fab delay , you can remove the timing resistor (it is surface mount , very tiny) then you cut in a pot to get much longer delay times . really cool easy mod .