Cigarbox guitar Pre-Amp

Introduction

I was inspired by the youtube video on the right to electrify my Cigarbox guitar.  I had done a project in the past where I wired a piezoelectric buzzer directly into some PC speakers but it never did sound that great. I did some searching on the web and found that's Colin's circuit was a basic version and that it could be improved upon namely by adding some Zener diodes to protect the FET from voltage spikes.

References

Collin's Lab -- DIY Contact Mic (embedded on this page)

http://www.hawestv.com/amp_projects/fet_preamp/fetpreamp1.htm

http://www.cigarboxnation.com/profiles/blogs/piezo-preamp-experiment

Schematic

Materials

• • MPF102 Field Effect Transistor (Radio Shack 500 colones)

  • Piezoelectric buzzer -- taken from an old calculator

  • Electrolytic capacitors -- 4.7uF and 10uF

  • Resistors: 3.3M, 560 (470*), 1.5K, 220K

  • 2 x 5.1v Zener Diodes

  • 9V battery

  • 1/4" phono jack

  • Small protoboard