My first scratch built guitar amp ca. 1980

[pullshocks]

Tonight I was doing a deep clean of my workshop, deep enough to unearth this little trip down memory lane.


I had built a Heathkit TA-16 in high school, but built this one around the mini-amp in Craig Anderton's book. All right, technically its not scratch built as  I bought one of the Godbout circuit boards, but  dovetailed up my own cab out of western maple.  As I recall, the speaker came from the late, lamented McKee Electronics.


I had been ampless for a couple of years, and had a lot fun playing with it.  But then a Fender Deluxe Reverb came into my life, and the mini-amp pretty much went by the wayside, especially after the batteries leaked all over the place.



But I'm really curious if it will work if hook it up to a power supply and a speaker that isn't all mashed in

[PRR]

Kudos for the dovetailed cabinet. Bonus points for the Godbout reference.

Audio amplifier kits must have been a very slim part of Bill's racket. He is best known as inspiration and supplier for most of the early home computers builders. He led many companies, then perished in the Camp fire.
https://vcfed.org/2018/11/13/r-i-p-bill-godbout-79/
https://www.retrotechnology.com/herbs_stuff/godbout_obit.html

[shooter]

4 of us Techs in the work center, circa '80, were all building home-brew computers, 3 on the S-100 buss an me, odd man out, adding boards and capabilities to my up n running ELF-II.
by the end of the extended 8 month deployment, 2 of the S-100's were up enough to be called a computer, I was measuring windspeeds, monitoring voltages, moved up from a 2 digit 7-segment and hex keypad, coding in Assembly, to a proper keyboard, 7" display, running Tiny Basic!
 the geek days 

[pullshocks]

Thanks for posting that. I love the trippy artwork on that catalog page.


Bill Godbout was credited in the preface  and the circuit boards for the projects were labeled Godbout. But it looks like the kit vendor was PAIA Electronics. PAIA still exists and still offers some of the Craig Anderton kits.

[PRR]

.... the mini-amp in Craig Anderton's book....

Perhaps like the attached clipping.

Makes some sense for Simonton and Godbout to share the work. Godbout seems to have had the PCB tooling or partners, and PAiA could help pay that off.