I have built a few of these in the past, and after reading of the death of Michael Waisvisz last week, I decided to use my last 709 to build this:
Due to the woofer in a ported enclosure with a tweeter, this thing is way more efficient(louder) than most crackleboxes with a small speaker. There is a significant amount more bass as well.
I installed a line out, for stadium use.
It runs on two 9 volt batteries(in parallel, so they last longer).
The contact points are pennies.
that’s the one thing a cracklebox needs, a big loud amp. Too many people build them with the same crappy little speaker as the original. As if they were afraid it wouldn’t work.
I definatly love this one !
blogged.
thanks
rob
The extra bass that this emits makes it way more fun to play than a normal cracklebox.
Since efficiency is the key, maybe the cracklebox people should get together with the Lowther/Klipsch/Voight Pipe/Carfrae/etc folks.
can we have some audio??
the reason people don’t use crackleboxes with big amps/mains power is that you are physically touching the circuit, and in the (unlikely) event of a ground fault or short or something you’d probably be killed or at least be savagely electrocuted…
Is that any less safe than playing guitar? With an old amp with a 2 prong cord, you can end up with the hot wire on the strings if the plug is in the wall wrong.
Anyway, the only one of these I built with a line out used an isolation transformer in parallel with the speaker. I guess that doesn’t make it any safer from ac shock, but the impedance of the primary seemed high enough that it didn’t affect what came out of the speaker.