(help) The Ultimate Bluesy Headphone Amp, good idea or waste of time?

[sengo]

Hey everyone,

    I want to start on a new project and was thinking about building a headphone amp so I can practice at 3:00 am without disturbing anyone. After listening to some Professor Tweed sound clips that pedal went to the top of my build list. Here was my idea...

I would run my guitar through a Professor Tweed, Tremelo (not sure which one), Cab Sim (if necessary), and a Ruby Amp with the headphone mod.

I was planning on putting it all in one box, but still have an output jack so I can run it through a normal amp, and I was going to put both an 1/8th and 1/4th inch headphone jack on it. I have some questions, however. Is a cab sim necessary to get a decent sound? I just read at runoffgroove that the ruby amp sounds toyish without it, but that was running it clean right? Also, how should the whole thing be powered? Can I just wire several 9v batteries in paralell then run a set of leads to a common ground and power for all the "modules" in the box, or should each effect get its own battery? Can anyone recomend effects to either add or remove to get a versatile bluesy sound, so maybe I could go from really delta blues to chicago blues or that late 60's psychedelic British style blues?

    All input is welcome! Thanks guys,

Nick   

[Mark Hammer]

1) Your ears vote for listening levels that will provide them with decades of unfailing service.  This means that the sorts of distortion that come from pushing a speaker or power stage to its limits should be avoided.

2) If the "bluesy" distortion you want can't come from the headphone drivers or power stage, then it needs to come from some sort of built-in clipping circuit.  Sounds to me like you want to pack a TS-808 variant in with the headphone amp and keep its output level modest.

[remmelt]

My Ruby doesn't sound toyish at all. I guess it comes down to enclosure and speaker choice, mine is built in a scrapped Park practice amp with a halfway decent guitar speaker. Clean and driven sound good to my ears, takes effects very well.

If you're going to power a bunch of different things from one source, I'd suggest a wall wart. Parallel batteries are a no go, I think. They'll charge each other? Unsure. My Ruby doesn't really work off a battery. You could try D cells, 6 in series, this will give you longer battery life but will also cost a lot of space. I'd just get a 12V DC wall wart, power the ruby and any 12V enabled effects off that, use a 7809 to bring the voltage down to 9V for the rest.

I haven't tried a cab sim with the Ruby but I've never felt the need for one either.

1) Your ears vote for listening levels that will provide them with decades of unfailing service.  This means that the sorts of distortion that come from pushing a speaker or power stage to its limits should be avoided.

too bad, huh...