@facto 550039 wrote:

Whats the sound and volume like?

Depends on how big the batteriy pack? I’ve heard some home made pretty punchy rigs the size of a PDA but they only last 10 minutes before they need recharging!

A Bluetooth speaker arrangement will give maybe 7 hours for a few people at reasonable talking volume.

you could do either, depending how everything is connected up (though many rigs actually operate in mono)

Not really but it covers a larger area at the same volume? Depends where you are positioned relative to the speakers…

Here’s my idea of a mini rig (recently out on the Isle of Gigha last weekend) powered off a 2.8KVa petrol genny from Lidl (£170 new)

2 x 18″ Peavey Black Widows – 4ohm (custom cabs – ask Raj for details 😉 )
2 x 15″ Eminence Kappa 8ohm (In Yamaha S115 cabs)
2 x Yamaha 1″ CDs 16ohm (in Yamaha S115 cabs – 40×60 horns)

Powered (3 way) by T-Amps from Thomann Cyberstore using a SUPER-X PRO CX3400 and Soundcraft Notepad mixer.

Total power is around ~1.3kw which is perfect on a 2.8KVa genny.

Do not underestimate the volume from such a mini rig. To put no fine a point on it, it was fucking pounding.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]85515[/ATTACH]

The green doesn’t show too well in the pics but is extremely UV reactive! (plastikote fluorescent green)

Thanks for the appreciation – Just for the record that mini rig ain’t mine – it’s tekn0fairy’s but I designed the spec for it and donated the drivers, the amp rack and hard graft was done by her to make it look like it does 🙂

@cheeseweasel 551320 wrote:

Would you rather, minirig or guinea pig?

no reason why you cannot not have both.

Under UK and EU animal welfare law you are legally obliged to provide them with exercise facilities, so you just run a belt drive to an alternator on the these, rectify them and charge the system’s batteries. by monitoring the rpm from the device you can judge when the animals are getting tired, and at that point replace them with ones which are sufficiently rested (as its also against the law to overwork them).

i’ve seen some American kids light a 1.5V glow lamp from an old style torch with a very inefficient roller transfer on a wheel containing a single rat, so would have thought 3 or 4 guinea pigs (being physically larger) would provide a reasonable amount of power, but there are warnings that it is unhealthy for a guinea pig to curve its spine so a treadmill type device would be more appropriate.

Aside from all this fucksense I actually bought a minirig last week and I’m pretty pleased with it. It’s ruggedly build, loud and the battery lasts for ages (around 18hrs, but probably a fair bit less if you run it at full volume).

@cheeseweasel 551471 wrote:

Aside from all this fucksense I actually bought a minirig last week and I’m pretty pleased with it. It’s ruggedly build, loud and the battery lasts for ages (around 18hrs, but probably a fair bit less if you run it at full volume).

what sort was it? To be fair there are a lot of decent quality small amp modules an efficient the DC-DC converter from 12V to +/-36V built in.

@cheeseweasel 551476 wrote:

It was a Pasce Minirig, they’re hand-built in Bristol. I think it just has something like a 4″ car speaker inside it, with a small amplifier and a limiter. The battery charges via USB and it has a ‘high gain’ and ‘low gain’ minijack input on it. No controls, no on/off switch – it’s just a chunky metal box that makes noise when you plug an ipod into it. Brilliant piece of product design IMO.

I can see how (after making up a few bodge cables) that would be very useful as a compact squawk box to check that there really is audio at the distant end of a long cable run…. (it has very high input impedance as well so shouldn’t upset things if you are splicing into a krone block or similar)

@facto 550039 wrote:

Hey, I’m interested in getting a portable speaker/amp to play tunes load when im out. People keep saying minirigs are the way to go but they are so small. Whats the sound and volume like?

I had my first proper look at one at boomtown fair over the weekend. I was quite impressed by it tbh.

I built this myself a couple of years back and its great (although I need to fix it at the moment)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8Km_ZsDSXM

That cost me about £60 all in, but I didn’t pay for the box, so say £30 for that its the cost of a minirig anyway. Main differences between what I did and the mini rig is that maybe the mini rig is a wee bit quieter and more directional sound, my box is probably a little warmer bassy sound too, but for portable and lovely build quality the minirig is the way to go I reckon. They’re bringing a minirig sub out too.