Gainclone

On this page, I will only talk about how I build my gainclone, and show you my gainclone. I will not discuss on how it works, or how to build it yourself. Please do not try this if you have no professional training.

What interests me is the simplicity of how an amplifier can be. There are very few components, so few that most DIYers don't even need to use a PCB, but instead do it p2p - point to point soldering. With so few components, an experience person could solder a gainclone within an hour.

There is no need for large caps, in fact the recommended value is only 1000uF, which makes the whole amp very small. Yet even with such few components, it is a very good sounding amp - many people say so.

What really got me starting was when I saw one of Peter Daniels' gainclone. I can't believe how beautiful a DIY amp can be.

Gainclone Schematic

Soon after, I decided to try out for myself. I did some research and found some schematics.

One can use as little as a bridge rectifier, 2 caps, 2 resistors and an IC for Gainclone Lite. However I did not choose this because there are DC offset at the output, and I don't like the idea of having the woofer always pushed or pulled.

I got this schematic from somewhere (I forget where) This looks good, but it seems to have a little too many components.

I edited the schematic from the recommendations given by some people at diyAudio. I removed the volume control because the volume will be at the preamp. The output resistor is not needed, and the 1uF decoupling cap is not needed because the 1000uF will be very close to the IC. I risk having no DC blocking cap in the input because most cheaper caps degrade the sound by a lot.

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