Bike Sound

Information

Dingy bells, squealing brakes, air hissing out of tires . . . no wait, this group is about mobile sound systems.

Members: 39
Latest Activity: on Saturday

Started by Matt Gilbert. Last reply by Peenworm Grubologist May 18.

Started by Matt Gilbert Oct 7, 2011.

Started by Spencer "Thunderball" Thayer!. Last reply by h' Jul 4, 2011.

Started by h'. Last reply by h' Jun 28, 2011.

Started by Brendan May 30, 2011.

Started by Matt Gilbert. Last reply by Matt Gilbert May 23, 2011.

Started by Matt Gilbert. Last reply by Matt Gilbert May 10, 2011.

Started by h'. Last reply by Spencer "Thunderball" Thayer! May 5, 2011.

Started by Josh. Last reply by Fat Tire Frank Apr 7, 2011.

Started by Brendan. Last reply by Matt Gilbert Mar 27, 2011.

Comment

Comment by James BlackHeron on Saturday: Some really great systems out there last night.

The mass was very well run (up until the end) and those running the sound-systems did a very good job of being polite and I even saw one spot where two guys came into sound conflict at a mass-up and one guy turned his off until the mass started moving again.

Classy!

The only negative thing I saw is the dude with the black sound backpack was being a huge douchenozzle when he threw his empty beer can into the median on Ashland. Dude, that's not a perennial flower bulb, it doesn't belong in the planters! Litter bugs STAY HOME!

Pack your shit out, don't be a douche. A bunch of guys riding around me made a huge boo when they saw that crappy action just in front of us. Some started saying rude things about the "music dudes" being jerks. So yes, you are hurting everyone with a sound system when you act like a nozzle like that.

Comment by Todd Allen on Saturday: Load testing will help with batteries that show good voltage without a load but can't hold their voltage with one. You can use your sound system as the load. If you want to save your ears or your neighbors ears a car headlight ought to suffice.

If your charger and meter work ok with another battery, then your 4.9 volt battery is toast. At least if it is supposed to be a 12 volt. If it's a 6 there's a chance for recovery by zapping it alternately with very high charging and load current pulses which can break up sulfation crystals if they have not grown large enough to physically damage the plates.

Sulfation occurs much more rapidly when a battery is discharged, immediate recharging after use, limiting discharge down to 11 volts for standard batteries and 10.5 volts for deep discharge and topping up charges every 2 or 3 months while in storage will extend battery life.

Comment by h' on Saturday: Thanks-- no load tester. Charger still works normally with other batteries.

Some decent sounding systems on the mass tonight.

Comment by James BlackHeron on Friday: It sounds like there is a problem Howard -either with the charger or the battery itself. Do you have access to a battery load-tester? Really, the only way to tell if a battery is good or not is under load. I've got one of those cheap 100A harbor-freight carbon-pile load testers and it does a pretty good job on both 12v and 6v nominal batteries.

I got mine on sale for $9.99 as HF is crazy with the sales sometimes but at $25 right now it is a handy thing to have around the shop if you ever work on batteries or equipment like this that has batteries.

Comment by h' on Friday: My 38 aH SLA is showing "full" with 4.9 volts per my "smart charger."

Is it toast?

Comment by Peenworm Grubologist on May 18, 2012 at 12:41am: Battery tech is incredibly slow and steady in its progress. There are periodic announcements of some huge gains in density, discharge, or charging time but not all three which are pretty much the prerequisites for some great leap in actual consumer use.

As for their utility in boombikes, if you really need more power than some sealed lead-acid can put out you're also going to wind up needing a housing that'll weigh something massive in order to make it sound worth doing at which point you've already signed on to pulling some serious weight.

Comment by Matt Gilbert on May 17, 2012 at 11:58pm: Will this technology come to fruition while any of us are still pulling systems? If it does, will we ever see a version of it that is light, small and inexpensive enough for practical use by us, or those who might come after us? I don't have the answers, but this does give us reason to believe that the future of Bike Sound is ... light ... http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/smart_grid/article/battery50...

Comment by h' on November 15, 2011 at 11:07pm: Interesting advances in Lithium battery technology:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15735478

Comment by h' on September 23, 2011 at 8:45pm: Wearable sound system for a Unicylist?

Comment by h' on July 14, 2011 at 10:27am: Identical playlists, supposedly identical iPods (4th gen 20 GB), press "play" at the same time. One of the iPods was a little funky and would hiccup now and then, so resyncing was necessary periodically.