Simple FET Preamp / Buffer

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This is a design that I found on the net. It's simple to build, and flat kicks butt. properly done, it can fit right inside the control cavity of many electric guitars. Credit goes to the original poster.

Newsgroups: alt.guitar
From: till@<xxxxxxxx> (Don Tillman)
Subject: Re: Building your own (ONBOARD PREAMP!)
Organization: Lucid, Inc.
Date: 30 Sep 92 09:20:08

<much old quotaton snipped for brevity>

Well okay. Here's a nice design from the "op-amps are for weenies" school. Low distortion, low noise, low feedback, graceful overload, simple, elegant, inexpensive, etc. This baby sings. It has a transfer characteristic somewhat similiar to the first 12AX7 tube in a Fender amp.

 

The FET is a 2N5457. The voltage gain is subtle, 3dB or so. You can substitute another low-Vdss FET if you know what you're doing. Power drain is about 0.5 mA, so a 9v batter will last a good long time. It does start to sound a little grubby when the battery sinks below 7v.

It's also trivial to add a high-boost switch if you'd like; have it shunt the 2.2k resistor with a 0.05 uF (adjust to taste) cap. Or shunt the 2.2k resistor with a 10uF cap for more gain.

Obviously you want to wire it so it's powered off when the instrument isn't plugged in -- it's far superior to use a switched jack instead of the weenie approach of using the second connection of a stereo jack.

Also note that this design is easily phantom-powered, so you can even get by without installing a battery.

-- Don