My attempts at trying to build my own mono audio amp using an NTE823 were not fantastic... I think I either misinterpreted a pull-down resistor on the schematic or messed up the capacitor arrangement, but within a minute or so I started to smell the oh-too-familiar "oh crap the IC is burning" smell. It was pretty dang hot to the touch, so I ripped it out before major damage was done.

Instead of building another infamous LM286 amp, I decided to browse Adafruit and see if they had an easier to use breakout board. Sure 'nuff, they had one for about half the individual component cost. Minus one point for my electrical engineering skills, plus one point for Adafruit already doing the heavy lifting for me. I'm going to change my parts list for the project to use the mono amp from Adafruit instead.