Electronic – Add a status LED to an existing device

There are a number of things wrong here

1. There are no component designators in the schematic. This makes it hard to talk about, so I'll be more brief than otherwise.

2. You should use junction dots at all points where nets connect. The four lines crossing left of the transistor is ambiguous.

3. A quick calculation of the bias point not taking base current into account results in 1.3 mA thru the transistor, so your claim of 1.26 mA is plausible. However, this should tell you there is no way you're going to get anywhere near 1 W of output power. Even looking at the transistor as a perfect switch, the collector swing will be from 6.6 to 24 volts, for a swing of 17.4 volts. However all this is at a impedance of 8 kΩ. 17.4 Vpp sine wave is 6.15 V RMS. At the best case power transfer, the load is 8 kΩ so the voltage is half that, or 3.1 V RMS into 8 kΩ, which comes out to 1.2 mW. That's less power (although at a different voltaqe) than the MP3 player is likely putting out.

4. The frequency response is a mess. The gain of the amp only 2.7 at low frequencies. This starts going up 3 dB/octave at about 50 Hz, but the high end is unpredictable because it relies on properties of the transistor you don't know. Then the cap in series with the speaker forms another high pass filter, but this also allows the speaker to load the output heavily probably having a reverse effect for part of the range.

5. I can't even begin to guess what the 12 kΩ resistor accross the speaker is supposed to do. It makes no sense whatsoever.

The transistor may act as a switch or a variable resistor. If no voltage is applied to the base (more precisely: no current flowing into the base) then the switch is open. As base current is applied it gets amplified by the transistor into an N times larger collector current. The "N" is an important transistor parameter, called \$H_{FE}\$, and it defines the current amplification factor. For general purpose transistors this is often around 100.

So if you apply a base voltage (you need a series resistor!) so that there will flow, say, 1 mA, then there will be 100 mA collector current if the circuit allows it. That means that other components may limit that current to a lower value. Let's assume your LED has a 2 V voltage drop, that will be rather constant for that type of LED. Then assuming the transistor is fully conducting (no voltage drop between collector and emitter) you'll have 9 V battery voltage - 2 V LED voltage = 7 V across the resistor. If we choose a resistor value of 350 Ω then, according to Ohm's Law we have a current of 7 V/ 350 Ω = 20 mA through that resistor and therefore also through the LED. (20 mA is a typical current for an indicator type of LED.)
So, while the transistor would like to draw 100 mA, the resistor will always limit that to the lower 20 mA.

You don't say what the signal from the amplifier is. Is that a line level (500 mV) or a speaker output level (3 V for 1 W)? In the first case the voltage will be too low; a transistor's base has to be at 0.7 V minimum before current starts to flow. If you use the speaker output you can use a 1 kΩ resistor in series with the output to limit the base current.

Also place a diode (1N4148) in anti-parallel with the base: cathode to the base, anode to ground. This prevents too large negative voltages across the base, which would destroy the transistor.