I had been wanting to try e-stim for quite some time, so a while back I decided to try something out. I dabble in music, and own a modular synthesizer. I want to say it runs up to 5 volts max (I'm going off memory here, as this was a while back), and the amperage is very low. It's powered by a wall wart transformer, and is a rack full of various modules. Each module does a very specific job, such as generating a waveform, or shaping a waveform in some kind of way. There is another module that is basically a preamp, and allows you to trim the voltage.
So, a while back I decided to try this out as an e-stim device, knowing that it didn't have anywhere near enough power to be dangerous. I plugged an LFO (low frequency oscillator) into the VCA (voltage controlled amplifier) which is the aforementioned preamp that would allow me to trim the output levels. So, I set the volume all the way down, and set the LFO to a low speed. I ran the signal into a 1/4" mono plug, similar to what you would plug headphones into a stereo with. I double, and triple, checked all voltages with a multimeter and made sure everything was safe. I then stuck the plug into my urethra, and slowly turned up the volume on the preamp. As the voltage increased, I started to feel it tingling, and when the volume knob got fairly high, I could really feel it. It was downright painful if I let the voltages get up near the peak, and was definitely something you had to slowly build up to.
The cool thing about a modular LFO is that it lets you change the waveform. You can set it to sine wave, and you can feel the intensity smoothly start at zero, and build up to the maximum, then gently go back down to zero, and so on...
Triangle wave is pretty much the same thing, but it spends less time at the extremes. You can select a saw wave, and you then feel it building up, then it drops to zero, then builds up again, then drops to zero. It also does square wave, which is the most intense. It alternates from nothing to full blast, with no transitions.
Using the VCA's volume knob, I could adjust what the max was for all waveforms. Also, the LFO has a knob on it that lets you adjust the speed that it oscillates at. Slow oscillation was really intense, as you can feel the voltage slowly building up, and you're dreading what it's going to ultimately feel like when it peaks. Or, you can have it oscillate quickly, and it's a whole different type of intense, and makes it feel more tingly in a different way. I also used some wires and was able to break out the two poles of the circuit, and attach them to different areas.
I've never used an actual e-stim device, but I imagine this was fairly close, and even lower power. It did the job nicely though.