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In cleaning my shop, I find boxes of bits I have saved. One thing I like to do is find an old receiver or tape deck or VCR and strip it down as far as it will go, to the last screw. I find this refreshing when I need to get my head out of what I am doing. I built up a great collection of metric screws that way. I always saved the power transformers, so I have a bunch of small ones from like cassette decks, and larger ones from stereo receivers.
One thing I find in some better gear are small boards with a headphone amp on it. Some are just a chip and a jack, some have a volume control too. Hookup is intuitve, usually left and right signals, power and ground. Some run the little IC dual supplies, others single supply. Whatever. I think the one I am looking at came from a multidisk CD player.
I came upon one such board last night, and connected my bench supply to it and put on my phones. It worked. It occurs to me I could use these things as basic signal tracers. Not a lot of gain, but I could easily add a gain stage. I powered it from a 12v supply, but a wall wart would do as well, or even a battery, and those choices leave it unconnected to earth.
One thing I find in some better gear are small boards with a headphone amp on it. Some are just a chip and a jack, some have a volume control too. Hookup is intuitve, usually left and right signals, power and ground. Some run the little IC dual supplies, others single supply. Whatever. I think the one I am looking at came from a multidisk CD player.
I came upon one such board last night, and connected my bench supply to it and put on my phones. It worked. It occurs to me I could use these things as basic signal tracers. Not a lot of gain, but I could easily add a gain stage. I powered it from a 12v supply, but a wall wart would do as well, or even a battery, and those choices leave it unconnected to earth.
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