Bikeology.net has a page of photos of bike related soundsystems, including Pedals.
Last night I was in Archway for the premiere of Hilary Powell's film, Light Years Away. It was screened back in the space where it was made, projected onto the wall of an office building with simultaneous live roller disco. Hilary had contacted me about providing a soundsystem and a friend rode Pedals up from South London for the occasion. We were joined by someone from Bassfreight who brought a few of their ASBOx backpack systems and Pedals took a feed from their radio transmitter. It all worked out well and I was even inspired to don skates myself. I had previously skated a couple of times on ice but this was my first time on roller skates - I only fell over twice.
Oobject has just featured photos of 15 boombox bikes.
I am currently building a new soundsystem which will be smaller and lighter than Son of Pedals. The electronics will be housed in a small die-cast aluminium box. There is input for 24V DC power and a stereo jack socket. I have built and tested the three way active crossover and the outputs of that will feed into three channels of a small four channel full-range class D amplifier. That will then feed out through a four-way Speakon socket (which will go to horn and co-axially mounted tweeter), and a two-way one which will go to a sixth order bandpass box containing an 8 inch driver for bass. The idea is to have a component system which can be easily carried by multiple people and rapidly assembled, but I might also try to mount it all on a bike. The next thing I need to do is assemble the amplifier kit. The new system will not go as loud as Son of Pedals but it will be even more efficient and could reasonably be powered by a single person pedalling. Logically it should be called Grandson of Pedals but that is too ungainly so I will probably think of a new name.
Son of Pedals saw plenty of action in London until August last year when it was transported up to Leeds by train and then cycled across to Lancaster for "Routes to Solutions", a week long festival of cycling and sustainability organised by Bicycology. I rode it some of the way but mostly I was on a Brox four wheeler carrying miscellaneous kit. It took a couple of days to do the ride and we spent the night camping in a park in Skipton. Once we reached Lancaster Son of Pedals met Pedals for the first time and I was hoping to set them up as a stereo pair. Unfortunately Pedals was not well, exhibiting a strange bass feedback as soon as the volume was turned up. I had actually built Son of Pedals to be a Lancaster soundsystem and they were only borrowing Pedals, so when the event was over it was the original Pedals which made the journey back South (minus battery, which would no longer hold a charge).
Pedals sat in my garage for a while but eventually I brought it into the house and spent about a week stripping it down, repairing some damage and rewiring it in time for November Critical Mass in London, see Pedals Rides Again. After a winter break, Pedals was back out for Reclaim Love where it was linked up with a few smaller systems.
I have just added a page for a soundsystem I built called Son of Pedals.
I was down in London this evening for Critical Mass. I didn't take Pedals this month but there were a few other systems including a fairly powerful one brought along by a couple of guys from AV2HIRE.COM
On June 3rd I helped run a 12V soundsystem workshop at RampART in East London. I had ridden Pedals up there the previous day and we used it as an example to explain the design principles and some of the construction methods. The system designer did most of the talking and the whole thing was videoed by Doug. The video is now available to stream or download at archive.org.
www.zenatode.org.uk Ian Gregory 2010