<VV> Leaving ignition on to play radio

[Tony Underwood]

At 09:10 hours 09/22/2004 -0700, corvairs wrote:
>Let's see.......System of The Down, Soundgarden, The Ramones, Devo, The 
>Dead Kennedys, Oingo Boingo, Offspring, Slade etc etc etc - 



Slade...  I've not heard anybody mention Slade in more years than I can
remember.     We *are* talking about the same Slade...  ?   Been about 30
years since they first showed up...?     

Ramones not only  ruled the roost for a long time, they had their heads in
the right place.   Devo was always a favorite.   Oingo Boingo I loved...
still think Elfman should have made more material with Boingo instead of
going after big money in the motion picture soundtrack arena.
Soundgarden was OK, most of it, some was kinda draggy and repetitive etc.
System of the Down, I don't have any of...   


I have an obscure and well worn concert-film videotape of "Urgh!  A Music
War!" with an absolutely Great performance from Oingo Boingo, best stuff
I'd seen them ever do on a stage, also a knockout performance by a teenage
Joan Jett...  and many others.    Also includes a lot of other stuff from
groups long gone, some still around... it includes the only performance I
ever saw of Klaus Nomi, who was one of the oddest wacko punkers ever...
reminded me of Iggy Pop in his younger days, only with the "Nomi" touch
thrown in.    His later (actually got some radio air time) rendition of
Leslie Gore's "You Don't Own Me" was nothing if not absolutely bizarre, too
bad it's not in that film.        

I copied the soundtrack to cassette and would play it in my Corsa ragtop at
high volumes... back when I still had it packed with 750 watts worth of
stereo gear... which is now in the back workshop so as to keep thieves from
ripping the top off the Corsa to steal it all.   

I had the loudest (music-wise) Corvair in town.    In a "sound-off"
competition held by the shop I worked for (back then), the winning entry
cranked out 135 db (CORRECTED SPL measurements) and 2nd place managed 134
db.   Both these vehicles, one a van and the other a specialty-built
minitruck, had over 1500 watts (real watts, not this advertised nonsense we
see today) of amplifier power working for them.   My Corsa ragtop, not the
best vehicle for concentrated sound-off power by a long shot, managed 126
db had I entered the contest, and would have placed about 10th in the
competition which included about 50 vehicles.   Not a bad comparison for a
ragtop which is indeed a very poor vehicle for a sound-off, far as SPL
meter readings go.   However, everybody within a quarter mile can hear you
in a ragtop with 750 watts of nonsense banging away... I had to use two
batteries, one in the trunk beside the amplifiers, to keep things from
lugging the electrics down at high volume levels, dim the headlights etc.
    

It would go loud enough to blur your vision and leave your ears ringing if
I pressed it to its limits, and of course rattled almost every screw in the
car loose several times.    It incorporated some tomfoolery and trickery
with woofers in the trunk up front which actually worked out well, courtesy
of a computer program for calculating a custom slot-loaded port-dump woofer
enclosure...  which has since been removed.   It took up almost the entire
trunk and that was just to support two Stillwater Design 12" competition
woofers which somehow never did blow up, although the glorified Pioneer
woofers they replaced did in fact go up in smoke, literally.   One of them
actually caught on fire and led to an interesting scene downtown in a
parking lot, as well as another interesting phone conversation with the
Pioneer tech rep when I tried to get them replaced under warranty.    

The guys at Pioneer actually did replace them, although it was more a
matter of doing so in order for their tech department to get the burned-up
woofer back.   They wanted to see it, never having seen a woofer actually
catch fire before.    Smoked up my trunk and sooted the bottom of the front
deck lid...     

I sold the replacement Pioneer woofers to another guy in the shop and
bought the Stillwater (aka "Kicker Pro-Sound") woofers, and most of my
problems with woofers stopped.   The Stillwaters would kinda "stink" if you
hit them really hard, had that hot "chemical" smell to them, but they never
failed.   


The goofy part of the flaming Pioneer woofer situation was the music being
played at the time of their demise was the "1812 Overture" by
Tchaikovsky... the cannon shot passage.   Very dynamic.    

Actually, one woofer had one of the spider-wire connections on the cone
fray slightly and cause a "hotspot" from excessive current through the
wire/connection...  the voice coil had overheated and burned and partially
shorted which caused the speaker to load the amplifier down and absorbed a
lot of current which melted and then ignited the glue that reinforced the
wiring connection from the terminal board to the voice coil windings.  The
woofer cone was made of polycarbonate which *will* burn nicely and make
lots of thick black smoke.    The ignited glue set the cone on fire and it
burned merrily until I saw smoke...  the woofer actually had evidently kept
working even while it was on fire until the cone separated from the voice
coil by which time sound output dropped considerably, which I noticed...
and of course the other woofer kept working until the smoke got my
attention and I shut things off and spent a few minutes in a parking lot in
the middle of downtown, lunchtime, trying to blow out a flaming woofer in
the trunk... as a small crowd gathered to watch the show...  


It was not one of my finer moments.   


The next stereo system to go in the car (whenever I finish its paintwork
and other refurbishment) won't be as malicious or involved although I will
expect it to thump...        

I still have that homebrew "Urgh! A Music War" cassette tape somewhere
although it's a bit war weary... and so is the original video tape it was
copied from.   I'd love to find a good copy of that film so I could redub
the sound track which was Hi-Fi Stereo VHS but the original program
material was mono and not the highest quality to begin with...  taped it
off Cinemax Cable a long time ago etc.   

A ride down the Parkway with the top down and Klaus Nomi screeching, Joan
Jett belting out those strains, Oingo Boingo doing what only they could
do...   

I *shall* do it again.   



tony..