ruby head ideas?

[sickbend]

hey guys I'm lookin around my parts bins and I found I have everything for a ruby build and an extra radio shack metal box but I'd really like to get some info on how to make a small head cabinet for it I have a lot of white vinyl fabric but zero wood skills I'd just like something small I can stack on my epi valve jr that would look decent I thought of an old tube radio but most are lil to big and to pricey 40.00 ish for what I had in mind so any ideas or links anywhere I can find out how to do this thanks 


 

     

[Joe Hart]

Most arts and crafts stores have a wide range of unfinished wooden boxes. Maybe a cigar box? Hope this helps!
-Joe Hart

[earthtonesaudio]

If you're certain you want to make it look like a head unit, ignore this...

But I think a cool thing to do with a Ruby or other mini-amp is to build it into a stompbox and put channel/gain switching or maybe a simple tremolo in the same enclosure, so you can have your channel switching footswitch and amp in the same box.  And people will go "where's the amp?"

Just another idea.

[sickbend]

I'm pretty set on making it a amp head but thanks for the other ideas. A bit of an update I cut some heavy white vinyl to use today and found a trinket box with a ton of hardware on it. I stripped all the hardware off and the top as well and now I think I have a good start on the amp head but I found something cool in a box I had forgotten about an art tube mp that has a broken jack ive also lost all the casing and so forth what do you think good candidate for a tube cricket? Here is a few pics any tips or thoughts?



 

[km-r]

man, there would be plenty of room inside for a dinosaur! 

i dont know much about your tube preamp...
it might do well as preamp for the ruby but it might just overdrive it...

another would idea maybe, is to add another ruby... you can go stereo!
where will the knobs go? are you going to build the head in a la plexi style?

[earthtonesaudio]

A ready-made tube preamp, now you're talking!

If the Art preamp fits, adding a Ruby inside should be a cinch, with a couple modifications:

-If your Ruby circuit uses a JFET as an input buffer, I would either lower the input impedance of the JFET, or remove it entirely and just capacitively couple to the 386.  The Art probably has a low output impedance, so you don't need a high input impedance to retain high-end clarity.  A high input impedance after the Art will also bring more distortion and noise... but who knows, it might sound good!

-I don't know what the power supply for the Art preamp is like, but if there's a +12 or +9 on there, it would be convenient to use that for the Ruby.  If it's something much higher like +15, you could possibly use a large value resistor and drop the voltage going to the 386, but that might cause other problems, and it's probably better to just use a separate supply or regulate off the Art's.

[sickbend]

A ready-made tube preamp, now you're talking!

I thought about just grabbing the tube and socket and maybe the pots 10k and 100k and make a ruby tuby or tube cricket it's a 12ax7 and 9 pin socket if I was going to keep the art tube mp I'd want to upgrade it significantly the op amps are tl072cn's I think I'd throw in burr browns or if I was really crazy some discrete op amps there and rebuild the caps with audio grade versions its an ok mic pre circuit it's a great D\I hence why the jack is warn out but it wouldn't push an amp or anything and it didn't give very good distortion sound to a guitar

[brett]

Hi
it would be cool to add a preamp out from your Epi jnr to your Ruby.
Don't worry about overdriving your Ruby.  You should get control of the output level via the Epi's volume pot.
If, for some reason, there is a problem, just add an extra 100kA (definately an A) pot between them.

+1 for the craft shop boxes.
Takes the woodwork out of the equation and lets you focus on paint, vinyl, shag pile and the other important amp parameters. ;^)
cheers