Left male

THE SPAMP is a guitar preamplifier, distortion effect and headphone practice amplifier in a conveniently sized enclosure which can be free standing or clipped on to your belt. The circuit is an original design, not a clone of any stomp box and not designed to emulate any particular sound. The main signal path is a distributed gain JFET amplifier. The very high input impedance presents minimal loading to the pick-up resulting in a wide, flat passband which sounds great. There is no tone or EQ control – use the control on your guitar or amplifier head. SPICE adjusts the gain prior to the distortion stage. This controls the amount or harshness of the distortion. HEAT adjusts the post distortion signal level going on to your amp or following effects. CHILLED no distortion, just the warm tone of JFET amplification. You can of course persuade a distorted output in CHILLED mode by winding up SPICE and or HEAT! FRIED a subtle application of even harmonics for a warm fuzz. GRILLED introduces odd harmonics for a meatier overdrive distortion. LINE IN a 3.5mm socket intended for connection to a line or headphone level source from a mobile phone or other media player. A 3.5mm stereo male – male cable is supplied for this. The stereo input is mixed into a mono signal and added to the guitar output path. This is a unity gain buffered pass-through, it won't boost the volume of your iPhone! Use the volume control on your media player to adjust the output level of the mixed in source. ‘PHONES a 3.5mm output socket. THE SPAMP is optimised to drive headphones with a nominal impedance of at 16 to 32 ohms. The amplified guitar output is mixed with left and right channels of the headphone output so you can play along without disturbing your parents / partner / children as applicable. Using THE SPAMP First of all, open the battery compartment and carefully connect a 9V battery to the clip. Try not to strain the wires. If pulled excessively they might break or be pulled off the circuit board. THE SPAMP has reverse polarity protection so don’t worry if you momentarily connect the battery backwards. THE SPAMP is energised only when a ¼ inch jack is inserted into the input socket. At risk of teaching you to suck eggs (which go well with Spam®) make sure the HEAT control is fully anticlockwise (low gain) and that there is preferably a guitar on the other end of the lead. If you plug in an open lead and the gain is wound up with an amp or headphones attached, you are likely to get a good, loud dose of mains hum. When THE SPAMP is activated, the yellow LED will glow. If a ¼ inch jack is inserted in the output socket, the headphone amp is automatically switched off to preserve battery life. The output impedance is lower than 1 kohm and will have no difficulty driving following effects or your stack. When you use THE SPAMP for the first time, introduce it gradually to your guitar and amp. Start off with SPICE and HEAT set to about 9 O’clock – roughly 25% gain. Likewise, turn your guitar down to about halfway and your amp to something that won’t freak your cat / dog / neighbours, etc. Play around with the settings on your guitar and THE SPAMP. THE SPAMP is equally happy with single coil or hum-bucker pick-ups. Experiment to get the best sound with your set-set up. Try it with the neck pick-up selected and the guitar tone turned right the way down for that old fashioned overdrive sound. The SPAMP Story Early one morning, before bed time, in about 2001, Spamp Man returned from a gig feeling somewhat peckish. Enraptured by the ensuing Spam® sandwich, Spamp Man received the inspiration for the Spicy Amplifier, THE SPAMP. A prototype was knocked up using the very can that provided the meal of enlightenment. And there the story might have ended but, in 2016, Spamp Man decided to share THE SPAMP with the World... THE SPAMP was designed by SPAMP MAN and all SPAMPs are assembled to a professional standard and 100% tested by SPAMP MAN himself. Shipping All SPAMPs are shipped by Royal Mail 1st class signed-for in the UK and by Royal Mail Tracked and Signed overseas.