[Professional Musician / Hobbyist Maker] Yes, this amp can work — experimental musicians run instruments through much weirder things — but it'll sound strange.

[Professional Musician / Hobbyist Maker] Yes, this amp can work — experimental musicians run instruments through much weirder things — but it'll sound strange. Whether you build an amp or not, you should definitely buy a standard guitar amp, so that he can focus on his guitar playing. A standard guitar amp (solid state or tube, to taste) will let him hear how his playing compares to other musicians (who also use standard guitar amps), helping him gain a critical ear. He'll learn what parts of the tone come from his fingers. When he's ready to go experimental, then he can start playing with (say) ripping pickups out of guitars and wiring them up to headphones as portable EM detectors. When he gets to that phase, that's the time to start using line amplifiers like the one in this article instead of instrument amplifiers. And drilling hundreds of screws into his guitar.