Portable Speaker Box - Skyflakes Edition

Create a passive but powerful portable speaker!

You'll need:
an old guitar/bass amp
a 3.5mm- 3.5mm male to male cable
an mp3 player (Zen recommended- it's loud!)
a Skyflakes box, or some sort of casing that will house your speaker

clamping tool of choice
knives or wire cutters

optional:
electrical tape
belt/strap for handle


no soldering required, but I used electrical tape to secure connections

You need:

A speaker magnet from an amp
A 3.5mm- 3.5mm male to male cable
An mp3 player (the Creative Zen is the loudest I've come across- this is important because thses are gonna be a PASSIVE speaker, meaning its got no external power source besides the mp3 player itself)

Grab an amp magnet from an old guitar or bass amp!

We found a 15 watt amp abandoned outside. Just take the magnet part out. Usually it is screwed in.
The two wires in the back should be red and black. The wires you'll have to cut, but keep the parts of wires that are attached to the magnet itself.

Shown here is the back of the magnet.
My red wire fell off in the scuffle of removing it :/

Take a look at the ohm rating.This one is 8 ohm. The ohm rating on this one is 8. Basically, the higher the ohm value, the more volume the speaker can handle- but the more power it requires.
8 ohm is pretty hefty, considering this thing is designed to handle considerable amounts of guitarage.

Take one side of the 35mm wire and cut off the cable just under the connector.

Now, strip off the rubber housing to expose three wires:

Two colored wires (left and right channels)
The groundwire ( which is very thin and fine in this case)

The colored wires that you exposed should be stripped as well
I stripped a lot of the casing off because I'm going to tie them around teh contact points instead of using solder because I misplaced my soldering iron >.<

Twist the actual wires together
twist the groundwire to make it one rope
and twist the left and right channels together to make one thick connector wire

I tied the groundwire to black
and the channels to the red side
note: the red wire fell off but thats ok because all you really need is for the metal to touch.

Tie them together and then clamp it with the tool of your choice

Now that the connectors are in place, test it out using your favorite ( and hopefully loud) mp3 player
I use the Zen, because for some reason, it outputs more volume and even has a bass boost.

Check to make sure both left and right channels are coming through.
A good way to check is to play a song that has sounds that alternate between the left and right speakers.

Now for the speaker "box"
I found that a Skyflakes box works with a medium-sized amp speaker magnet.
But feel free to try any case you like.
There is an instructable that featuresa tin can speaker.

I punched and cut a hole in the side to thread the 3.5 wire thru, as well as cutting a hole in the bottom to let some bass out.

I used electrical tape!
You can use solder or even tiny alligator clips to secure the connections.

Now you can fit your speaker into your case!

Thread the 3.5 wire through th hole you created on the side

you can also put on a an optional covering
I cut this circle from material on the the amp the magnet came from

Fine tune your speaker, personalize it, make it yours.

Optional:
Electrical tape to secure the wire near the hole on the side of the box
Use a belt or similar strap for a handle
Personal graffitis etc

You can now carry around your own personal speaker. yess!