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Pocket Amplifier

for Electronics and Instrumentation

April 2022

Final Product

image I absolutely love music in all of its forms. I play the baritone and am currently learning the electric guitar. As I've been getting into the electric guitar I've also been heavily interested by being able to design my own pedals and modulate my own sound with tech. The picture of the left is one of my first forays into this area where I tried to design my own pocket amplification system. I used an Altoids tin as the housing for my pocket amplifier and engineered all the circuitry to fit within that shape. 

Planning Phase

image For the course "Electronics and Instrumentation," we were tasked with creating some project to demonstrate our learning in the class. I chose to build a pocket amplifier. The planning of the circuitry was done on an iPad, first to plan out the routes, and then to plan out the protoboard spacing with a dotted paper template as shown in the image on the left.

Prototyping Phases

image To first ensure that my circuitry was planned out correctly, I performed a test of the system on a breadboard.
image Once this was confirmed, I then tested out the fit of my system within the housing I had chosen for this project, an Altoids mint tin.
image After a healthy application of hot glue and solder, my pocket amplifier was complete. The final result is displayed both on the left as well as in the video below.