The DIY swap meet was great. I saw this Pignose amp at one of the tables. Normally this wouldn’t really interest me. But, my wife had put this amp on her Amazon wish list. They wanted $40, I didn’t have the cash on hand. Luckily I sold a few things so I got the Pignose at the end of the day. Turns out one of the guys at the table lives in my neighborhood.
Anyway, here’s a few pictures. Gotta love the pigs nose shaped switch on the front.
My wife immediately found some batteries and tested it out. I try to encourage this behavior to reinforce the idea that it’s good to send me to the swap meet. Sort of like send Jack to the village with the cow. But, in this case the cow is cluttering the house and magic beans are something that makes everyone ooh and ahh.
I had been thinking about building a Ruby for some time, but had never gotten around to it. At $40 the Pignose even starts to look like a good deal compared to the Ruby. I’d have to order all the parts and spend some hours putting all together, and finding a good speaker could be problem. So all said the Pignose was a good deal.
Of course it does offend my DIY sensibilities. I have to admit that my first thoughts were to build a Ruby inside the Pignose! Luckily (for the Pignose) making it a gift to my wife has saved it from being taken apart.
Looks like it runs on 6 AA batteries, hmmm 9V… The idea of creating a small amp that runs on 9V is a good one. The Ruby gets great reviews on the internet. Not sure what type of speaker they use in the Pignose. But I’m sure it’s a guitar amp type. Th sound is pretty good, not great. It has an over driven quality, though not distorted. It also gets pretty loud. Not sure could annoy the neighbors, but I think I could get my child to say “stop, stop, stop playing that”.
One area where I could see improving the thing is to swap the DC jack on the back with a standard Boss style 9V type. The 1/8″ jack is so uncommon and inconvenient.
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