Cool Cigar Box Amplifier Mods!

by Shane Speal

I’m an electronics idiot. There, I said it! I suck when it comes to soldering and breadboards and all that crap. I couldn’t wire my way out of a paper bag, if the truth be told.

…But then C. B. Gitty came out with a pre-wired cigar box amp kit and I just had to dive in and try one out. And then another and another.

The Gitty amp kit a simple 2.5 watt amp that delivers living room volume in a tiny package. Most of their pictures show a standard cigar box with a hole cut in the middle and a speaker with some sort of grill or cover.

I figured if I was going to build cigar box amps, I might as well use as much found-object stuff on them to make them look otherworldly, just like some of my best cigar box guitars. Here’s three examples that used the standard Gitty kit and the parts I used to mod them: Continue reading “Cool Cigar Box Amplifier Mods!”

Build a One-Tube Cigar Box Amplifier (Vintage Plans from 1954)

We love vintage plans, especially ones from the Eisenhower Era.  Here’s another one to drool over and explore: a One-Tube cigar box amp!  The plans were first published in Science and Mechanics, Feb. 1954.  We’ve taken a scan of them, cleaned them up and put it all together in one downloadable .pdf file below.

Continue reading “Build a One-Tube Cigar Box Amplifier (Vintage Plans from 1954)”