Anyone tried the tone bridge app pretty
Fun little app for your guitar
Here’s the app it’s free
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@anon98660487
I love the cigar box amp.
I wonder if you have ever seen one of these. I’m going to guess, yes.
Stored in,
)
Yep still carried in my old lunch box. I keep everything! lol
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@Slick1 , @anon98660487 Any points for improvisation?
The IC at the heart of this amp is a 2W class B amplifier. Runs off of a 9V or pedal power and can drive an 8ohm load, but I mostly use it as a headphone amp. I swapped a few caps and resistors but I salvaged as much of the original PCB as possible. Pretty sure lead solder improves tone, take my word on it.
An LM386 IC can also make for a reasonable battery powered amp for $5 worth of components. Using the example circuit right from the datasheet offers surprisingly reasonable results. Not 60W high gain tube results but it will get the point across. Your choice of driver and enclosure will have a far greater impact on tone than trying to improve on the circuitry.
Brian May’s famous ‘Deacy Amp’ was built by bassist John Deacon using salvaged radio parts and it seems to have worked well for his purposes.
It took a lot of adjustment and relearning to play with a high gain amp. The minor nuances in technique that you’ll never notice with a bedroom amplifier will bring down the house with feedback through a high power rig. Ultimately though you will be heading down the path to mastery- afterall what good is power without control?
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The biggest thing that helped me improvise was backing tracks. Gave me a crash course in how the neck related to itself. I would also find drum tracks on youtube and wikiloops, download them and import them into Amplitube. Mess around a few times figuring out a rhythm and a change or two and then record it. From there I would just mess around with what was basically a backing track of myself and figure out a an idea for the lead.
The only danger of this is how easy it is to get repetitive with the rhythm, like record the whole thing and realize it after the fact lol
This is the closest thing I did to a “complete song” where it had some some nice changes throughout. It’s not generally the type of thing I’d play either, it was for an ex who was into new school punk stuff but I’m almost satisfied with how it came out.
Also playing with other people helps, more so if they’re better than you. The weird thing is that the better player almost always ends up laying down the rhythm part because it’s easier for them to lock in a simple part.
Edit- man I just listened to another one of the songs I did and am cringing at and thought of this- don’t get comfortable in the same section of the neck for the whole song 
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Developing timing with a click track will put you years ahead of most players and will really help you lock-in with a drummer. This is key for rhythm, shredding, or sweep arpeggios. Van Halen’s rhythm playing is overshadowed by his leads, but he was a master.
I played bass when I was gigging, and to this day I avoid mentioning it aloud lest I get sucked in to a jam session. “Hey man, how about you play the root notes while I stumble through this 12-step blues!?”
PRO-TIP: When a venue gives you free drink coupons promptly find the two hottest girls in the club and lavish them with drinks until your set. When it’s your turn to take the stage invite them to dance up front and they will lure all the drunks to the dance floor.
Good rhythm makes the booty shake.
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I completely misread your post that I was responding to lol. I thought you were asking for pointers on improvising on guitar. I just read it again and I see what you were saying now. Duh
In my defense this is a forum of stoners so did you expect? 
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I wouldn’t know how to take an amp apart lol
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I could get it apart…
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I’ve gone through lots of gear; Orange, ampeg, genz-benz, vox, fender, Peavy, it comes and goes.
This 1989 pre-Peavy Trace Elliot amplifier was picked up from the consignment section at a local jamspace. When my amp stopped working I quit my job to go back to college for electrical engineering technologies so that I might repair my bass head.
After a few years of having this amp strewn across my workbench in pieces, replacing worn components, tracking down some faded schematics on ebay, and recieving a diploma, it was repaired. Evidently a former owner decided to solder a resistor across the effects loop input jack. That’s a tube amp trick for increased gain, but definitely not applicable to this design.
Turns out the guy who designed this amp went on to design Ashdown’s amps. Had I known that at the time I would have just bought a new head and moved on. Probably not my wisest life decisions in retrospect but this amp really sings to me. I plan to keep this one.
On another note, Monoprice sells a cheap 10W tube combo guitar amp identical in design to every other musical instrument corporation if you really need all of your neighbours to hear you play Eruption at 6:00am.
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At sixty one im getting back into music and found al my former sngers are dead…so im learning to sing and play at same time…working on finger style as well.
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Where to start, where to start? I in MoBilly’s Green Rom that he gave a lesson in guitar. Of course that made me happy, I have a thing for guitars, other musical instruments also. When I was a green pup my buddies put together a band, my brother and I knew some electronics and we proceeded wasting our youth doing things that many here have done. The second band attempt saw two of them and my brother playing the bar circuit in a portion of the Canadian prairies for a few years. Then people grew up and got real jobs. I wanted to play bass and then guitar, never did learn at first because my fingers would always be healing from being cut up due to broken glass at work (occupational hazard). Then they closed the place down and I went back to school and went on a direction in life that, um… …had me going in a different direction.
Then another direction, In this place I had a workmate that was retiring He played guitar and I thought I would put together a practice amplifier (he was looking for one) out of a few bits and pieces from work along with a few things in my tickle trunk (Canadian thing). In the end I did not get it made by the time he retired, he bought himself an amp also. So I decided, what the heck, I’ll just mess around with amplifiers until I get board of it. (I am like a squirrel, “Look over there.”
So fast forward a little and already knowing what I should have made for him) I was looking up the sound of an old Gibson amp on Youtube and afterward I saw on the side a link to a cigar box guitar. Since I heard of them but never heard one I clicked on it. There was this ten year old kid with three strings just wailing away on a stick attached to a cigar box. I thought “Hell, I could make that.” and I did. By this time I had bought a G&L tele so I could hear the amps as I mess with them. Had health issues and ended up spending a lot of time in bed, decided I wanted something acoustic to practice with. Made a chambered guitar, sounded better than I expected and then I thought I would make a real acoustic guitar.
I sent away for some tops, did not want to waste them with mistakes so I built a ‘practice build’ guitar. It was a bit of a long road as I made equipment to help me make the guitar. In the end I got it done, it was just a 16" long body, 22" scale, would really fit as a Parlor guitar now days, back then I had not heard of them yet. The reason it was the size it turned out to be was that I found a cedar board that had the grain quartered (up and down at a 90 degree right angle to the top) and the board was 16" long. It was sold so you could cook your salmon steak on the BBQ.
I was on a forum where some people build guitars, told them what I was going to do and some thought I should be a little less ambitious. It seemed a tall order what I had planned. Basically I wanted to cut my own wood and build everything from scratch. In the end I did it, I did have wrong terns but overcame it all. I ended up building a guitar with pine back and sides (sold as craft wood, it was about 1/4" thick and I did not have to saw wood doen to size). It has a redwood top made out of a fence board (it is quartered but a three piece top. Fir neck and oak fret board. Birch binding and head plate. A not purple piece of purpleheart for the bridge. I welded up a truss rod on top of it.
Bent a few extra side sets.
Makeshift cutting the cedar fence board (a practice piece) on a jury rigged metal band saw.
Making the rosette, the piece of birch from above.
Sort of copied traditional design.
With the back on.
Glued together pieces of fir, with my truss rod.
Bridge.
Finished guitar, it actually sounds pretty good also.
All because of some guy retiring. Funny world, no?
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You got skills
Holy sh…t!! @bunny, Very very nice!! Appreciate it!! congrats!! Btw, a while back I bought a $2,000 1972 Ramirez, sold ten years later at literally the same price!! Was always amazed on how some objects (at times works of art) keep their reputation, as well as price tag! 
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Yeah but when is the last time you heard someone say, “I built this guitar and it got me laid.”?
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Thank you. I find building guitars a good match for my skills. I need to get back into it, I have been trying to get other things in life done and out of the way. I will be posting a few more pictures and maybe another build sequence if people do not mind. Like the question, “What are you going to do with that 2"x4”?"
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Am I right to say that is a Martin, maybe 000 or a Clapton model!?
The one pictured? Oh no, it is the size of a Terz guitar. It may be a little deeper I think. I made some Martin Size 5 guitars though. The neck is a 2X4 on the top one, the darker one was the first one I did with regular (good) lumber. That one used a 2x3, although I had to add a piece to get the heel long enough.
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Would love to try one your guitars!! Only Steel or you deal with nylon strings Classical guitar too? Nice! Really nice!!!
Great job my friend! There’s no better feeling than playing an instrument you have made with your bare hands!
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