Teresa's Bridgestone

Robbo takes the Disco-Ball Red Bridgestone Boom-Boom Bike on one of Austin's monthly moonlight cruises.

Note the MonkeyLectric light in the spokes.

The hot red Bridgestone was Teresa's old city bike. I added the kiddie seat when the grandchild was in town last winter. It rained the whole time Ava and her parents were here, but the kiddie seat remains because it was attached to the rack with 1/2 inch wide zip ties, which makes it moderately expensive to remove and replace, so the seat stays. Besides, it's a known fact that cars will give you more room because they think there's a baby onboard.

Anyway, the opportunity for the disco-bike presented itself when I discovered some "white van" speakers sitting on a curb down the street. Just in case you don't know "white van speakers" is a term used to describe those speakers one might acquire from a guy in a parking lot near a busy intersection with a white van... and he happens to have a bunch of speakers for sale. They look like really classy speakers, they sound great and he's offering a really sweet deal. Then, you buy the speakers, take them home and eventually realize you are very disappointed

So I tore apart the salvaged speakers (one of the 12-inch woofers was missing) and surprise, they actually were quality components; nice crossovers (the kind with field coils in addition to capacitors), aluminum coned mid-range and two different levels of tweeters. I happened to have a nice 10-inch sub salvaged from a set of computer speakers. Then I proceeded to build one of my ice-cooler speaker boxes. This one would be as large as possible, but would fit like a glove into the existing kiddie seat



All my bike-speaker builds (I've built at least 6 now) are powered by the 12 volt Dayton t-class amplifier module from PartsExpress.com. I love them because they are small, run cool -- and at 15 W (RMS) per channel -- powerful enough, and they SOUND GREAT! They're rated at less than 1% distortion at that output, by the way.

This bike now has two amplifiers, and essentially, two pairs of stereo speakers. The front pair hanging from the piece of lumber are some nice little Phillips home theater speakers (from Goodwill at $6 a pair) and of course have their own separate t-amp module and battery pack. A 'Y' adapter cable from the iPod ties the two systems together and yes, both systems are in phase. The bass does bump!

I've got to admit this bike is ridiculous, top-heavy (and just plain heavy) and isn't as stable as it should be, but man-o-man does it sound good! There's lot's of sub-bass and almost unlimited treble and mid-range available. When you're in the cockpit the effect of being centered in a room of infinite depth is quite impressive. The Bridgestone goes boom-boom!