Give your speakers some extra personality by making them out of a vinyl doll. Kid Robot makes the easily hackable Munny doll and I've been meaning to cut one up. The combined need for some new speakers created a happy union of doll and speaker.
Now, I'm not the first person to think of this. I've seen at least three different versions of a Munny with a speaker in its head. Still, the only one I've seen in person was just one doll for mono sound and the driver was pretty worthless. I wanted mine to sound at least decent and I'd say I surpassed that.
I went to the Kid Robot store in SF to offset the $25 price tag by not having to pay for shipping. At the time I couldn't find any of the black Munnys online and kept calling till it was back in stock.
Each Munny comes with a few random accessories. A big pencil, a cape, goggles, all sorts of stuff.
The drivers are Tang Band 3" Bamboo Cone Drivers (link) and have an extended range of 105-20,000 Hz.
I bought two drivers that are reasonably small at 3". This was pushing it pretty close to what would fit on the Munny and to be sure everything was where it should be I measured the diameter of the back of the driver and cut that out of card stock.
I then put this card onto the face of the Munny and traced out the circle.
The vinyl that the Munny is made of is pretty firm when it's at room temperature, but heat it up with a hair dryer or a heat gun and it softens up oh so nicely. After that the Xacto cuts through it like butter.
Cutting is all about careful subtraction. I cut within my safe area quickly, but when I was getting close to my line I started whittling down the space with constant checks with the drivers and eyeballing it from the side to see where I needed to remove more vinyl next.
Here's how the Munny heads look without their faces. Cute, huh?
Thread the speaker wire through the neck and stuff the head with some polyfill.
I was considering using bolts to keep the head in place, but the look was a little too S&M for my taste so I decided to seal the connection with some Lexel.
Run a bead around the whole driver, tie it up, and let it sit over the weekend.
The Munny speakers are all set and ready to go. Hook them up to an amp (I'm using a Sonic Impact T-Amp), run in an input from an MP3 player or your computer and you're good to go!
