Homegrown Music... and Musical Instruments! Good News for Homegrown Music Lovers

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In order to evaluate your sound bounty, however, you'll have to make a special cord to test (and use) the speakers with. You'll need four to six feet of speaker wire (available at stereo shops or hardware stores for about 10¢ per foot), a small "plug" (this can be found in electronic parts stores... be sure to buy the right size to fit the earphone jack of your radio or tape player), and a pair of alligator clips (pick 'em up when you buy the plug). Simply connect the plug to one end of the twin wire, and fasten the two clips—one to each wire—at the other end. (If you don't want to solder the parts in place, you can buy both the clips and the plug with screw-type connections.)

With your test cord made, you're ready to try out some speakers. First, either remove the "sounders" from the old TV cabinet, or leave 'em in and take out the rest of the television's "guts". (Whether you want to use the speakers in their original cabinet or not, be especially careful when handling or working near the picture tube... such components are under considerable pressure and can implode dangerously.) Then just use your wire to connect a portable radio or cassette player's earphone jack to the two terminals on the back of the speaker itself... and be prepared to be "blown away" by the power and range of the sounds your little set will suddenly be capable of producing!

The same add-a-component concept can bring surprising results at the "other end" of a small tape recorder, too. Such sets usually come equipped with their own tiny microphones, but—if you can contrive to connect a better mike to the unit's external microphone input, you'll be rewarded with better sound from your speakers (especially if those components have already been improved as described above).

Of course, most good mikes don't have miniature jacks on the ends of their cords, but adapters are available (again, check electronic parts stores) that'll allow you to make the connection. Try it out. I guarantee that—once you upgrade the microphone and speaker on your low-cost cassette player as I've suggested—you'll be truly impressed with the recorder's "rich" performance.

MORE GOOD NEWS

Last year (in MOTHER NO. 54, page 128) this column listed a number of independent record companies (firms that're producing albums with down-home music on 'em... instead of the usual media-hyped disco trash that the big companies are offering). Since that article drew a good bit of response from you folks, I've prepared a second listing... and plan to continue to mention small producers as I gather information on 'em. After all, such "little guys" help to keep available the kind of music that many of us MOTHER-types like best.

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