Play on webs

Category: Boom-in-boxes

  • Boom in da Box 3.0 – Black Box Edition

    Boom in da Box 3.0 – Black Box Edition

    This boom box survived for a much longer period of time than the Boom in da box – v1.0 and Chill out box 2011. It was alive and kicking between 2012-2019

    Created from sturdy 13mm plywood paired with 6×9″ JBL speakers this thing was a beast, design inspired by the black boxes in airplanes for some reason. Total operational weight: 20-30kg depending on battery 🙂

    During the years it survived some abuse and a couple of incidents and only needed minor repairs (like a new battery

    Right before midsummer 2019 the lead acid battery died for the second time. This time, instead of fixing it I opted to buy the JBL Boombox since it was: a) available, b) lightweight, c) bluetooth enabled, d) had great sound.

    It took another 3 years to mentally let go of this memory filled beauty, but in 2022 – it was finally time for it to be retired and recycled for real.

    The end.

  • Boom in da box 2.0 – Chill out box

    Boom in da box 2.0 – Chill out box

    Cleaning out old hard drives can mean that sometimes you come across old treasures.

    Back in 2011, for the music festival Peace and Love I wanted to bring my trusty home built “boom-in-da-box” (see previous post). However, the rules for the festival camping stated that no lead-acid batteries were allowed into the area and the “boom-in-da-box” ran on a car battery + 600W car-amplifier.

    To fix this I needed two things:

    1. More energy efficient 12V amplifier.
    2. Smaller speakers.
    3. A box to build in.

    I opted to build the speaker inside of an empty wine box, a “chill out” boom box was born. It lasted the festival, but mono-sound and the hassle of AA’s meant this box eventually died.

    Here’s the pictures from the project, enjoy 🙂

    From this angle it’s difficult to know that this is not an ordinary wine-box.
    Samsung Galaxy S phone hooked up, imagine some sweet 2011 tunes playing in the summer sun 🙂
    Velcro (Hook-and-loop fasteners) to close to bottom of the box, amplifier and battery pack visible. Much more refined than what I remembered 🙂

    That’s it for now – likely there’ll be a post about the other boom boxes if I find any interesting pictures 🙂

  • Boom in da box 1.0

    Boom in da box 1.0

    Below is a first version of the boom in the box, anno 2011.

    It was built to play music outdoors, engineered to be cheap and loud (and with surprisingly high quality if you didn’t max out the poor old Volvo V40 car speakers from 1998).

    This box was active for about 1-2 years and repaired a few times after it had had too much dancing (it fell of bikes more than once, you can see the boxes changing color and style in the pictures).

    Below you can see the boom-in-da-box v.1 in it’s natural habitat, surrounded by loud friends, alcohol and plastic boxes.

    For some reason the amplifier was outside of the box itself, I’m guessing to allow for cooling in the hot Swedish summer sun (April 30th). The smiley-face ventilation on the back apparently wasn’t enough…

    Below is a sound test during the creation of the box.
    Cell phones back in 2011 recorded sound … differently 🙂

    Listen at your own risk, you have been warned!

    More from this category: