Car stereo hack for DIY PA system

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Rikkitic

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#84068 24-May-2011 17:01

This is not a home theatre question but it is an audio one and I'm not sure where else to post it. Apologies if this is the wrong place.

I need to contrive an inexpensive high volume 12-volt PA system for a friend to use in a parade. It has to be mounted on and powered by a quad bike. There are a few commercial options that would do the trick, but they are much too expensive. My thought is to pick up a 100+ watt car stereo amp on Trade Me, bridge it to drive a single speaker, disable any low pass sub-woofer filter, and plug my friend's MP3 player into the line input as an audio source. Can anyone tell me any reason why this might not work, or anything I should watch out for?

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

nickb800

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#473544 24-May-2011 17:27

Are you going to power it off the quad's battery?

Rather than an amp, you could buy a cheap headunit and drive up to four speakers directly off it, I think four speakers faced out around 360 degrees would project the sound better than one big one.

For the speaker(s) i would be considering a horn speaker (~$30 from jaycar, etc) which projects higher frequencies much better, although is quite directional so you would need more than one.

For Undie 500 a couple years back we used a horn speaker from a car alarm, hooked it up to a cheap 40W audio amp module and played the dukes of hazard horn sound from my ipod. Our theme was 'pukes of hazard' so it worked a treat, turned a lot of heads!

I cant think of any reason why your idea wouldnt work.

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richms

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#473548 24-May-2011 17:33

Should be fine. Look for a class D one if you are running off the battery and want a longer runtime before the battery dies.

Richard rich.ms

Rikkitic

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#474254 26-May-2011 08:54

Thanks for the replies. I appreciate the suggestions, especially about the horn speakers. I see the Jaycar ones say they can handle 400 watts rms at 8 ohms. I'm also following an amp on Trade Me that warns it needs to be connected to at least a 600 watt speaker to avoid melt-down. I assume I can just parallel wire two horns to get the right impedance and power though I'm not so sure if the quad bike can keep up with the battery drain. My real question though is if this is even legal? I don't want to blow any kiddie eardrums.

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos