Today, I created a block diagram for the practice build, which I'm going to refer to as "Spuntone". We'll consider this Il D'oro Version 0, since the main point of the build is proof-of-concept for the final version.

I'm going to use the BH5 "Little Giant" guitar amplifier from Blackheart Engineering (which itself is based off a Valve Jr.) as the base for this amp. When I design the bass amp,  I'll be starting from closer to scratch, but I saw no need to do that for Spuntone. This amp will include the RGB rotary encoder EQ, savable settings, and possibly a digital effect or two (not sure yet). The BH5 was designed with a solid-state rectifier, so that will match Il D'oro as well. Instead of designing out a PCB for a microcontroller system, like we'll do for the bass amp, I'm going to use one of my dev-boards to control Spuntone (I'm leaning towards a Launchpad right now).

Spuntone will be far fewer watts than Il D'oro, and won't have as many features, but one thing it does have that wasn't in the Il D'oro design is a switch to reduce the output from 5W to 3W. On the BH5, that's done adding a switch and a resistor to the output tube. However, I have been thinking about adding a switch to change between dual and quad output stages on the bass amp, which would have the same effect of reducing the total output wattage. That's probably harder than it sounds, but I'm keeping it in mind as the project progresses.