Free speakers

As I've mentioned before, I love scavenging for treasures.  And therefore, I love the "kerbside rubbish" weeks -- where people place larger items out on the kerb, for the rubbish collectors to (sometime that week) pick up.

About five days ago I was driving to where I park my car to commute by train.  Amongst the other items piled in front of one house, I saw an item which I perceived as a large shopping bag with two large blue circles on the front (photo above) .

But the next morning, I drove more slowly, and realized:  a speaker box!!!

So that evening, on my way home after work, I grabbed it.


Here are some more shots:
 

Just a simple plywood box, with a bass port, and rope handles.  I checked the terminals on the back, and we indeed have continuity:  about eight Ohms worth.  So at some point I'll add a quarter-inch jack (the front is held on by screws -- so, easy to disassemble), sand it just a bit, and paint it blue or green (or, blue-green).


And then -- just yesterday -- I came across this pair of speakers:

Just a fake wood-grain vinyl covering, and some sort of chipboard constuction.  As you can see from the reference ruler, they're about one foot by one foot by one foot (or:  30cm x 30cm x 30cm).

As with the earlier speaker box, both of these speakers have continuity -- so they probably work -- although I haven't tried them with an actual signal.  For these, the resistance is just above four Ohms.

At some point -- but not until the new year at the earliest -- I'm going to connect them together with some scrap wood, wire the two speakers in series (so the total will be around nine or ten Ohms -- and that's OK [better to have too much impedance than not enough!]), and mount a quarter-inch jack on a spacer between the two speaker boxes.

And, again:  paint them some variation of blue or green:  I have a fair amount of "mis-tint" paint in blue and in green, which I pick up cheap.


FWIW, here's the plate on the back of one of them.  It's an actual brand name -- although I don't know anything about the fanciness of that brand.

Anyhow -- two "free" (plus labor) speaker cabinets, within the space of a week:  not bad.

Although:  I wish people would throw away from amplifiers, or guitars...  ;)


--GG