Has anyone tried a smokey amp? Their a small 1watt amp modelled on a cigarette packet. I usually play through an Epiphone valve junior but its a pain pulling the thing out all the time and i usually have to play pretty loud in order to get that crunchy tone. Dont get me wrong i love my EVJ but im looking for somthing to mess around on. I know the smokey amp isnt a valve amp but looks cool and its tiny. Has anyone got one and do you recomend it for Harp practice?
I have a couple of them. They make good door stops and are actually good electrical workbench testing tools. In my opinion after using them a few times, is that the sound you will get from playing without amplification will be better. I also believe that playing unamped helps develop your "chops" and will in the end make your amped playing better also.
Isaac will tell you that you can build yourself one better and cheaper. Having said that, I have one. It's my only amp right now. It's fun to play around with, and fits in your pocket. It's passable, but does not really produce that great harp amp sound. It'll do until I need a real amp.
It's really not something you'll like if you've tried an EVJ... it's more for beginners who are still developing their acoustic chops and just want an oh-too-eager taste of amplification.
on the flipside -- it's pretty cheap to buy and even cheaper to build. Why waste time thinking about it? just go try it out.
Hi! Instead of buying a Smokey (which is what I wanted to do) I would get a Danelectro HoneyTone (which is what I did). The HoneyTone has some knobs, so you have a kind of control over your sound (volume, tone, o. drive). And I must say, that it REALLY GIVES you the tone! You can hear it here.
Even more, the Honey Tone looks way more cool to me :). The price is about the same as a Smokey. Oh, I also have Epiphone Valve Junior and I also love it :).
Last Edited by on Apr 16, 2009 2:18 PM
I have one and since I do most of my woodshedding in my car, and because it's so small, it comes in handy if I want to practice amplified. I agree that you should develop your tone unamplified, but its good to practice micing techniques also. If you have the ways and means to make one, go for it, but they're really not very expensive. To sum it up - I'm glad I bought one. (It helps to have a volume control on your mic.)
I used to do a lot of tinkering with electronics. In fact, built a few DYNACO kit things - pre amp, power amp, tube tuner. That said, now days I would rather send a few bucks over to Jim McBride who make Bottle o blues mics an sells them with a Smokey if you like. Some folks like to tinker - that's fine too. I used to consider the assembly as much fun as the use of the object.
Thanks for advice guys,i think im gonna try a smokey. Its not to replace my EVJ and hopefully ive already developed good tone, i purely like the look of the litte suckers and would just like a little amp that fits in my pocket. Im not expecting the moon on a stick from it. Its just something to crank up up and play when i cant be bothered playing acoustic and cant be bothered getting my other amp out (i can be very lazy) Thanks again.
You can build your own "smokey amp" from parts you can get at radio shack. Price will be $10 or less if you have stuff already. I'll be making a "how to" vid on this in the near future. You can get some instructions by searching for "radioshack noisy cricket amp" in google. Beavis Audio Research has a free pdf download of build instructions for this. ---------- -------------- The magnificent YouTube channel of the internet user known as "isaacullah"
You misunderstand me Goose. I just found that on the web.
However, I will say that I'm currently putting a Smokey circuit in this drive in movie theater speaker box for a friend. He wants to use it as an iPod speaker. I'll post pics & video when I finish it.
Hawkeye, That is a fantastic idea for the Drive-In speaker. I've been seeing a bunch of these at a local flea market lately, and was dying to come up with a reason to buy one. Thanks for giving me one.
No prob James. A couple thoughts for you if you do decide to take on this project...
My friend only had the one speaker box, so I decided the Smokey circuit would be the easiest and most affordable approach. If he had two of them, I would've wired them in stereo. I'm keeping this one's input mono with a 1/4" jack, and having him use a 1/8" stereo female to 1/4" mono male adapter. Benefit of this? He can use it with his iPod, or he can run a small mic to it for use as a small PA. You could do the same with a harp mic.
The original speaker was a 4" ceramic that had seen better days, and wouldn't have been conducive to good media sound quality. I replaced it with a 4" speaker that I salvaged from a busted old boom box. But for your purposes, whatever speaker you find in the shell will prolly be better for harp tone. ----------
It's cheap, it takes a 9V battery, and it sounds a LOT better than the Smokey for harp. If you have to pack a mic anyway, it's not taking up much more space. Hey, you could even wear it on your belt (but FatJesus don't wear no belts).
Also, Hawkeye--I remember when you posted that. Did you ever try playing it in a gig?
A while back there was a video of a guy who'd connected the shells of two bullet mics together, back to back. One end was the mic, the other the amp. For a form factor, it looked pretty good.
I sell a lot of Smokey amps with my Bottle 'O Blues mics. A wide variety of people get them. Beginners who want a taste of that "amped" sound, people who want to practice amplified harp but don't want to bother with a full size amp, players who want to jam with guitars and need just a little boost, and those who just want a cool toy to jam on. Of course they don't produce that big Chicago blues sound - but who expects that in a 1W battery powered amp that fits in your pocket? They're cheap and you can buy them on eBay or lots of other places. If you want one, get it! And yes, if you're into electronics, you can build your own similar amp fairly easily. A better idea, which I've had several customers do, is to pull the guts from a Smokey and put it into your own cool package.
Somewhere I have some sound files of the Smokey. I'll see if I can dig them up and post them.
Before anyone says is ... yes, I know the picture is not of a BoB mic or Smokey amp. I just needed a picture to put over the sound file to make the video. I'm playing through a BoB and Smokey, and recording into a PC using audacity.
Finally finished the speaker box over the weekend.
I wound up having to tweak a few items in the Smokey circuit. I added a 500K volume pot off the input signal that had a push button on/off switch for power. Also added an LED on top for power indication. The gain was still super high on it and made it all sound garbled beyond a very low point on the knob or the iPod volume. So I lined a resistor load of about a meg in between the input and the pot, and that tamed it down.
I have a smokey, a friend gave me one. It feedbacks like crazy with my high-z stick mics, but I can use it with my bullet that has a volume knob, if I keep some distance between the mic and amp. So make sure your mic has a volume control because the smokey doesn't. It's fun, very easy to bring of course. I have a friend who's a busker, he plays acoustic guitar and sings, the other day we jammed in the park and I brought the smokey and my bullet and although I prefer the acoustic sound of my marine bands, the smokey sounded cool on some songs. Even had to be careful with volume so it wasn't too loud. I like that it's so small and feels casual.
Dragon, you can tone down the gain on your Smokey much in the same way I did on the speaker box. All it takes is a resistor or two inline with the positive input signal before it hits the input jack on the Smokey. Or even a 10K ohm linear potentiometer to serve as a volume control on the amp itself. ----------
Thanks for the tip, I'll try it out! I have a fun little stick mic that would be better suited for bringing to drunken late night jams in the park :) I think I'll also check out some more little battery powered micro amps, you can never have too many toys!
