Vox DA5 Mod

[gilscales]

I was looking for a cool little battery powered amp for my son to take with us on a road trip (2 weeks, Seal Beach, CA all along the coast to San Juan Island, WA and back down the 5 Frwy through some National Parks) and I gathered from google reviews the Vox DA5 was pretty good (found one on craigs list for $75) but then I just had to see a page on mods where people were putting 8" speakers in place of the stock 6"

I took it a step further and ordered the Eminence Legend 102-8K Alnico 35w speaker and built a 12mm birch box just big enough to fit the driver and plenty deep to house a 12v 8 ah sla battery to replace the stock C battery holder then hooked up a DC jack to the back panel to recharge the battery from, threw on some duratex and some familiar looking hardware and....

390ma draw on 5w with a 3 way switch for .5, 1.5 or 5w, on 5w battery should last many hours and on 1/2w 30 hours or more between charges and plays fairly loud on the 1/2w setting

Surprisingly it does not play a LOT louder but has much more authority down low and is way better sounding than the stock unit, a lot bigger and heavier too! still only about 11" cubed, very cool toy!

This and the Traveler EG-1 http://www.travelerguitar.com/products/ ... ogany-red/ makes a great back seat PSP replacement, when we get tired of hearing him he can plug into the headphones and keep going!

Pardon the crappy pics, my phone with an unsteady hand I guess?

[Chris_Allen]

That looks really cool!

[LelandCrooks]

Very slick.

[bzb]

Awesome job, gil! Did you have to wire up anything to step down from the 12v?

[gilscales]

Awesome job, gil! Did you have to wire up anything to step down from the 12v?

No the supplied wall wart is of the 12v variety and I read some posts online that people were noticing that the unit played a little weaker on batteries than stock, I called a few service reps until I found one nice enough to look up the info I wanted and apparently there is a 12v voltage limiting regulator of some sort so no problem with the new battery and I cannot tell the difference if the thing is plugged into the wall or not.

[Grey Owl]

hey gil,
I gotta say that is one very cool looking little rig,