Rockman Mini?

[rbc]

From what I can tell, Dunlop hasn't done much with product development with the Rockman line, other than some changes to Rockman Ace internals. I guess there could be a lot of reasons for that. It occurs to me that the electronics in the Rockman headphone amps could be miniaturized a lot, even if they remained analog. It would be interesting to see a "Rockman mini" of some kind. The Vox Amplug and Electro-Harmonix Headphone Amp are current samples of mini headphone amps. How about a Les Paul with a built in Rockman? Any thoughts out there?

[Guitarvamp]

The Vox Amplug and Electro-Harmonix Headphone Amp are current samples of mini headphone amps. How about a Les Paul with a built in Rockman? Any thoughts out there?

Since nobody else will contribute, I will.

If you look back where the Rockman came from, it IS a mini amp/speaker setup. To make it even smaller just seems silly to me. How small do you really need it? You could make it as small as the Vox Amplugs or the small Line 6 units... but they clip on your belt and have little variable control, too. Not much gained there.

A guitar with an onboard Rockman - nope. There's too many sonic variables in the guitar world to have such a niche like that. What about the people that don't like Les Pauls? What about the people that like Les Pauls but don't want anything to do with the Rockman sound?

It would be a cool idea for a custom project..... but how would you do the controls and switching? That's a lot of sliders and switches (with no EQing). You could make the guitar into a single-sounded instrument... say with the Rockman distortion. But now your guitar is only good for that.

Gibson has their Firebird X and there's also the Variaxe guitars. Very cool stuff, but difficult to play the various "instruments" of it (switching between presets and such).

I'll take the big ol' racks from the 80s. They can be as simple or complex as you make them.

[rbc]

You have some good points there. At some point the mini-amp gets too small to have any useful controls. As for the "built in" idea, there would have to be some kind of way to bypass it. Getting useful controls on a built-in would be a challenge too.

[iZheil9152]

If the guitar was like the fernandes nomad, I wouldn't mind it having a rockman circuit (x100 maybe) built in it. But if I had a choice, I would go with rack equiptment. I like all the options, buttons, switches, and pedals

[darthoverdrive]

I like to breadboard circuits to use with my guitar, you know distortion pedals and the like. Well I've always been fascinated with the Boston tone and have tinkered around with circuits to try and achieve it.

A while back I came up with a circuit that could give the basic Boston sound and could either play through my guitar amp or through my computer and speakers. It is a combination of circuits from the original patent and what I found on the internet. It is basically a headphone amp and stomp box rolled into one but without chorus and reverb.

Through the PC speakers it sounded very close to the recordings. The guitar amp sounded good but was a slightly different tone.

I think the circuit can be simplified, i.e. fewer components. If I still have it on a bread board I'll play around with it.

I started working on an all op-amp version but never finished it. If there is an interest in it I'll dig up my drawings and peruse it some more.

Let me know what you think.

[darthoverdrive]

Ok, the PDF didn't upload so here it is in JPEG format.