How to make a soundsystem

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You too can make a bike soundsystem!

Here are some ideas to get you started. Others should keep adding to this page, it's very introductory right now.

Contents

Basic components

  • Battery - you can use a 12V car battery (sealed lead-acid or deep cycle are nice, but not required...motorcycle batteries paired up might get you a smaller package)
  • Speakers
  • Trailer - you can buy a nice expensive cargo trailer, you can mount everything on panniers, or you can go the easy way and get an old two-child trailer and rip off the parts you don't need.
  • Amp - you could use the on-board amp of a car stereo head unit, but it probably won't be enough
  • Sound source - ipod/mp3 player with a long cable to mount on your handlebars, or perhaps a stereo head unit with a radio receiver, CD player, etc.

Ideas

  • In general, if you stick to car audio components for your amp/stereo, you don't need an inverter and can use ordinary 12V DC batteries.
  • Focus on getting good-quality speakers to push a lot of power...subwoofers sound amazing but take a lot more power, and on the other side too small speakers will burn out trying to push too much sound.
  • The Dayton DTA-1 Class T Digital Amplifier (http://www.parts-express.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?Partnumber=300-380) puts out a healthy amount of power and can run on 8 AA batteries! Pair this up with a reasonably efficient set of speakers and a music source and you can get mobile system that doesn't cost or weigh too much.

Networked Bike Sound

The most powerful sound idea we have is the lowest-power version of them all: if we can get a local radio station to play a Bike Party-tailored radio show, we can ALL build or bring our sound systems or boom boxes and spread the same sound throughout the ride! Let's work on this...

Links

Dan Goldwater is a co-founder of Instructables. Currently he operates MonkeyLectric where he develops revolutionary bike lighting products. He also writes a DIY column for Momentum magazine. He posted these three links in Bike Party Forum 12/6/10:

Other Instructables:

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