I previously wrote about building a cigarette pack-sized amplifier . The inspiration for the one I built came from something called the Smokey amp which was conceived in the 1980s by Bruce Zinky. The original amp came in a couple of different styles. One was in a plastic case and the other was in an actual recycled cigarette pack. So the original Zinky amp looked cool and it could fit in your shirt pocket. It had no volume or tone control and had a couple of other problems. T

Monoprice makes a great 15 watt tube amp, but it has this ugly mashed potato colored Tolex covering on it it which I couldn't stand...

I've been making a lot of mini amps lately and was wondering how small I could go. Like maybe a size that would fit in a shirt pocket...

I built myself both a cigar box bass and a ukulele bass and have modified a Jaguar bass, so I wanted to have a bass amp. I didn't want...

I saw on CB Gitty's site (good source for Cigar Box Guitar parts) that someone had made a guitar from a lunchbox that looked like an old...

This is a Philco radio from 1949. These were known as "farm radios" as they had not only an AC power cord but also a complex 90 volt battery pack for farms that were beyond the reach of the electrical grid back in the 1930s when these were first introduced. I removed the tiny 3x5 oval speaker and extended the slits in the wood to fit in a 6" x 9" speaker to give it better sound and much more output. Rather than trying to reuse the built in tube radio which grounds itself dire

Epiphone started selling their Electar Century amp model in 1939 at a price of $62.25. It was originally a 4 watt tube amp with a 12"...

General Electric has been a big manufacturer in the electronics space for decades. They not only made products for the consumer market...

Cigar Box amps are fun and easy to build, but they just don't have enough substance to be a serious six string guitar amp. I wanted to...

Danelectro was a very popular American maker of electric guitars and amps in the 1950s and 60s. They also produced guitars and amps for Sears and Montgomery Ward branded as Silvertone and Airline, respectively. My first amp was an Airline 8512 made by Danelectro (see article) and my first guitar was a Danelectro U1. When I started building my own amps, I spent a lot of time on the internet looking for cool designs. The cool shaped speaker cutout on the Danelectro Leader mode