reccomend a smokey type speaker, please

[Boogdish]

I'm building a 386 based mini-practice amp for my friend's birthday.  I've got all of the parts except for the speaker and i was wondering if somone could reccomend a small (no bigger than 3") speaker to me.

thanks,
Michael

[bkanber]

I built a smokey-type amp a while back, and used a small radio shack speaker. The thing was TERRIBLE. I swapped out a different speaker that I got from mouser, and still hated it. So the thing sat on my desk for months untouched.

Then, I got an idea.

I went home and dug through my piles of stuff and found an old computer speaker (actually not that old.. I have a 5.1 surround Creative speaker set, but nowadays I only use 2.1... so I have 3 spare speakers..), Took it apart, put the amp and a battery inside it, drilled out a hole for the power switch and stuck the jack in the hole that the speaker cable was coming in through. The whole thing (obviously) is the size of a desktop computer speaker, yet it sounds great. I also use it for my iPod occasionally (don't have a fancy iPod dock), and the response is great. I figure I could do a better circuit for the insides, as this circuit clips funny, but I know the distortion at high levels is due to the amp, not the speaker.

The only problem with this, of course, is that the 9V battery is behind the front plate, the speaker, and some screws.. makes changing the battery inconvenient.

It's going to be hard to find a good speaker to fit a cigarette pack. Also, cigarette packs are flimsy. If you're not TOTALLY locked in to the cigarette pack idea, see if you can find an old computer speaker.