[Daveskater]

Yesterday I finally got around to a little project I've had lying around because I finally got the last part I needed.

Basically, I have a Logic 3 i-Station Traveller, and wanted to add some larger speakers to it, because the ones in it are only small and thus mainly produce treble notes. To add a bit of bass (and a bit more volume hehe) I got some speakers from a Proline Digital iPod speaker system, and have managed to attach a female headphone socket to the unit, to allow me to attach the bigger speakers when I wanted them.

But before the speakers could be connected to the i-Station through a headphone socket, they had to be on headphone wires. Fortunately I already had some old Sony speakers that were a bit rubbish so cut them off, and soldered the new speakers to the wires. This also gave the new speakers a housing.

There is quite a bit of theoretical guess-work going into this, as I had no idea which wires on the headphone cable were the ground, and which were the positive wires. What I did was think that the two wires the same colour (kind of like light copper) should be the ground, and the red and blue wires are going to be the positives, as they're different colours for the left and right. Fortunately, this turned out to be right

Then I had to solder the cable with the headphone socket on it to the PCB in the i-Station. This was a bit tricky because the wires coming out of it were red, white and yellow. This is where the next lot of guessing comes in. The wire that is used as the input has wires connected to the board that are red, black and white. I then decided "red is red, and white is white", so then decided that the yellow wire was the ground. Fortunately the wires that go to the current speakers are marked positive and negative, which helped a bit.

The only problem now was that there was only one yellow wire, and two grounds for the speakers. I had to get a small piece of wire and solder this onto the side of the end of the yellow wire, so that it could go across and connect to the other ground. This was a lot harder than it sounds, as my sister is terrible at holding things steady hehe.

With that cable soldered in and the speakers ready to go, it's time to test it out! Fortunately all the guessing I did earlier turned out to be right and it worked perfectly.

All that's left now is to make a hole in the side for the wire to come out of, then I can pop the front back on

Now here's some pictures:

With the headphone socket cable soldered in


The finished article

[Howard]

What an excellent little mod mate. Great explanation and pics.

Regards Howard

[Daveskater]

Cheers mate

I took those pics just before posting hehe. I would have taken some whilst making it, but I already needed 4 arms and didn't have one to spare

I think I need this now hehe.