Basic transistor Guitar Amp

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calx
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue May 15, 2012 3:00 pm

Basic transistor Guitar Amp

Post by calx » Tue May 15, 2012 3:46 pm

Hi all.

I am new to this forum and I have what I guess must be a pretty simple problem to start with.

I would like to make a guitar amplifier for my A2 level Product design project and so I thought I would start with a simple transistor amplifier to get things going. Basically, I have tried this a few times and watched videos, read books and seen schematics and I cannot get this circuit to work (see attachment for schematic).
I can hear the interference when I hook up the battery so it all must be connected up, right? But when I plug the guitar in, I get no sound out of the speaker whatsoever. I have tried to follow a schematic I saw on youtube for a transistor preamp where his input was a mic and his output a PA speaker, he ran it through an IC power amp stage though. Do I need to do this to get any sound?
If I need a power amp stage then I would prefer to make it myself out of transistors instead of an IC as I would like understand how it all works, so does anyone have a schematic for a basic power amp stage?

Any help would be appreciated as I don't really know where I am going wrong.
Thanks in advance
Callum

PS, the transistor is a 2N3904 if this matters
Attachments
This is the schematic of the circuit I built on some breadboard.
This is the schematic of the circuit I built on some breadboard.
Schematic basic amp1.jpg (15.58 KiB) Viewed 4253 times

Biomed
Posts: 21
Joined: Wed Jul 25, 2012 7:58 pm

Re: Basic transistor Guitar Amp

Post by Biomed » Wed Jul 25, 2012 9:16 pm

Your circuit won't work. You need a pre-amplifier followed by a power amplifier.

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