I assembled a tube amp and speakers in 20 minutes!

The best part of running diyparadise is getting to know all kinds of folks all over the world. Making friends all over the net so to speak!

Recently, a diyparadise newbie, Andrew, was interested in Monica3 so he wrote to enquire about her. He then casually mentioned, “hey since I’m in Japan, if there’s anything you would like me to get for you over here, let me know!”.

I don’t know about him but if I were him, I would have regretted saying that!

Immediately, this site came to mind. Hover around the link to have a sneak view of the site. The company is called Gakken and their niche seems to be all this awesome educational electronic projects. Hey, I’m an OLD adult and still had so much fun with it!

The snag is, like most Japanese companies, they are very happy to do business just in Japan, and not to the outside world. Hence very few such wonderful products are sold overseas. Thanks to the Internet, I learned about this amp kit from the hktubeaudio yahoo group.

Without further ado, arrangements were made and very quickly, the boxes arrived at my place.

Well, it’s a pretty small box! BlackBerry beside it for size reference.

Contents of the box.

All you need is a screwdriver to assemble everything. No soldering at all! Within minutes, the horn speakers are ready.

The manual is really detailed. So what you can’t read Japanese? Neither can I. It’s so simple that if you just study the diagrams, construction is a breeze. Bottom view of the single-sided PCB as I mount it on the chassis.

Top view. I removed the top 3 covers to show the tiny output transformers and the center compartment for a pair of D size batteries.

Why, they even include a tube pin straightener!

With tubes mounted and batts installed. Ready to fire!

Alright! With an Ipod Shuffle as source, this has to be the most compact tube amp + speaker, entirely battery powered system!

It is so compact, the whole system sits on top of my notebook and look, there’s still so much space around.

Okay, this kit I believe is meant for the education market. The manual even describes the operation of the vacuum tube, as long as how to improve its performance! Shown are steps on how to convert the pentode operation to triode mode, as well as increasing the loading on the horn speakers for better sonics.

The serious diyer would nitpick on the part quality, but hey, this is soooo simple. You could easily swap in any part you like. The schematic is provided.

My oh my! What a wonderful kit! So detailed, so simple, and sooooooo satisfying!

I built the whole caboodle in less than 20 minutes. For the first time in my audio life, even my wife helped me to assemble it. It’s so cute she just got to participate.

Well, thanks a lot Andrew! Owe you one on this!