From the MAKE Flickr pool
Andrew’s neglected subwoofer found new life as a mini guitar amp –
So I made the $5 Cracker box amplifier (makezine.com/09/crackerboxamp) almost a year ago, and the box I had put it in was falling apart, even though I had reinforced it with more cardboard.
Anyway, I was looking at it on my desk this morning, thinking about how it would be much better if I wasn’t using the little 3 inch speaker I had in the box, when I looked over and saw this neglected subwoofer in the corner of my room that had never really been used (and probably never would be).
My first thought was to take the speaker out and use it for the amp, but when I was disassembling it, I noticed how well the subwoofer itself would work as a case for the amp. So I set to work fitting all of the pieces in, and a while later, I had a fully functional amp that looked and sounded much better than the original.
I may use the open “12v in” hole for a 9v in to power the amp in the future.
I too can attest to the goodness of the subwoofer-turned-guitar-amp design. With the plastic cover removed and speaker turned around, an old Altec Lansing sub has served me well as the affectionately named “Ol’ Crappy” :P
(The name only refers to the rough aesthic – it actually sounds surprisingly good!)
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2 thoughts on “The ‘cracker box’ amp subwoofer”
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A couple of years ago when I was getting back into playing electric, I had no amp, so I repurposed the speaker system that came with a dell computer a while back. No mods really necessary–the 3-piece system had nice bass and I could put a monitor (complete with tone controls, etc.) right up on the mike stand.
Back in the really old days (1980 or so) I just used to plug into the mike input on my tape deck (remember those?) and run it through the tape monitor input on my receiver. Sounded crappy, but it was adequate for a practice amp. Then I bought a 50 Watt combo and never looked back…