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Topic: Neat Idea for a back yard
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Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted June 08, 2016 08:31 AM
Drive-In speakers are actually very common.
Most drive in theaters have gone out of business and most of the ones still operating have gone to FM broadcast for audio, so there are thousands and thousands of used ones available.
-plus you can buy brand new ones from Detroit Diecast.
Detroit Diecast
Mine is one of these.
If I get another one, I think I'd like to buy a dead vintage one and restore it. It is very common for them to have the names of the old theaters still on them and in the best case it would be great to have one from a local theater. (E-bay usually has a couple of dozen on auction ranging all the way from corroded and dead right up to brand new.)
The parts are readily available. The catch is you need to buy a special screwdriver to open them up, because otherwise the patrons sometimes tampered with them. They often tried to drive away with the speaker still hanging in the car window, but that's another story.
Beyond the cool exterior, it's just a regular 8 Ohm speaker with a volume control (other than being weather proof...). I've wired it into the Ext. speaker jack on my Elmo machines and it sounds pretty good.
Long term I want to permanently connect it into my home cinema audio system and have it sitting on an end table (I mentioned hanging it on a vintage car door in the living room: my wife vetoed it thoroughly! ![[Wink]](wink.gif) ), but like many of my projects it's waiting in line for some other one to get finished.
I also think it would be cool to plumb it into an FM radio or automotive sound system so I could use it at a real drive in theater, but right now that's just a "maybe someday".
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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...
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