Has anyone scratch built a mic pre on the cheap?

[Hourglass]

I can do lots of things - but making electronic devices actually WORK isn't my strong suit.

Thus I have successfully -MODIFIED- my PR8 mic pre with some new opamps, but anything I've built a circuit board for and tried to make pass audio has met with miserable failure.

Has anyone out there pieced together the bare minimum of components which will simply amplify a signal? It doesn't have to be good. It doesn't have to be clean. It doesn't even have to sound as big and full as the PA mic at your high school - just something that works...

I've messed around with the spec circuit diagrams for various opamps and I've never actually gotten anywhere. I've tried breadboarding some of the things in "Electronics projects for Musicians" but again - aside from putting a filter on a wall-wart supply I'm pretty much batting .000

As such, I hesitate to drop cash on a PAiA or SCA kit until I can make something which was a pile of metal and plastic actually do something functional.

I've got 5532's, 2134's and even some 072 opamps hanging around...

There's gotta be some quick and dirty diagram on how to slap together some resistors and caps and link it to a 9V wall-wart and get some sort of signal.

I don't care if it picks up the local AM station or if it hums like an SOB... just so long as I can plug an SM57 into it and get something intelligible out the back end.

Once again, hoping I make any fucking sense at all...

ryan

And BTW - a schematic won't cut it. I need a circuit diagram since I've yet to unlock the mysterious code of interconnecting all that shit w/o getting something shorted to ground (which I suspect is the main downfall of my EPfM projects...)

[A-Barr]

Check this link out: http://home.new.rr.com/trumpetb/audio/micamp.html
Haven't built it myself, but that's about as simple as they come. I've always thought that it would be much easier to build a pre from a kit than to do one totally from scratch, there you've got a big manual explaining everything, a printed circuit board, which is much harder to screw up than a breadboard and phone support.
Good luck!

[peterc]

You could also try this cct

http://sound.westhost.com/project13.htm

Easy to build on stripboard/veroboard.

Peter

[YOUR KONG]

The $5 mic pre?

As discussed here

[Hourglass]

Check this link out: http://home.new.rr.com/trumpetb/audio/micamp.html
Haven't built it myself, but that's about as simple as they come. I've always thought that it would be much easier to build a pre from a kit than to do one totally from scratch, there you've got a big manual explaining everything, a printed circuit board, which is much harder to screw up than a breadboard and phone support.
Good luck!

That's the kind of thing I was looking for.

Thanks!

ryan

[valverec]

Check out the green pre. This may be a little more than you want to spend, but this is a great mic pre. You can even buy PCB's for it on that board:

http://www.prodigy-pro.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5150

[soundguy]

if all you want to do is amplify download some of the operational notes that usually come in the datasheets for the opamps you have access to. Manufacturers will often show some suggested circuits which you could adopt into a mic pre on the cheap. Thats basically how the 1176 was designed, around the datasheet for the fet.

dave