Custom Soul Cycles -- Related Posts

Let's say you're inspired to create a music system for your bike that has the ability to rock a social ride with 10, 20, 50, or more people.

Unfortunately, there are no products on the market that allow you to do this. The only bicycle audio products on the market are ones that include speakers 3" or smaller. There's no way a three-inch speaker can generate the amount of bass that makes you or the people around you feel like they're 'in the music'. To do it properly you have to build your own. And while that may be appealing to some people, others, you perhaps, may not have the time or workshop space to make it happen. But you still want to have the awesome experience of leading social rides with a righteous music system, with beautiful integrated lighting, great bass, crisp vocals, controls on the handlebars, you know, the works.

To answer this need, Rock the Bike is creating a proper Cruising platform for bicycles. It will include the Soul Cycle Head Unit, which we've had on the market for two years, and a new beautiful, streamlined fiberglass bicycle-specific speaker box, which will be available in early '08. The new fiberglass cabinet will initially be compatible with the Xtracycle platform, but we will be releasing other versions (for the Mundo Utility Bicycle and potentially for standard rear racks.

Check out our Flickr photoset we're creating that shows the process of creating the Soul Cycle Mothership, as we call the new music cabinet. When you see the care and attention to detail that is going into the new music system, you'll get psyched about it's debut this year.

At the Maker Faire (www.makerfaire.com) May 25 and 26, Fossil Fool taught a workshop on how to make a one-of-a-kind bicycle audio system.

Topics included:  

- Overall concepts

- Picking amps and speakers and batteries.

I rigged my favorite speakers to my new Soul Cycle Chopper, to prototype the sound of my new custom cabinet. To power the speakers, I used a small digital amplifier similar to the ones in our Soul Cycle Head Unit.

Above: Fossil Fool's new ride -- the Soul Cycle Chopper.

This shot reminded me of the classic image of New York's first hip hop DJ, Kool Herc.

Kool Herc, pioneering hiphop DJ's classic convertible

Kool Herc was the first to introduce the spoken word (rap) to dance parties, and the first DJ to play just the breaks, or sweet moments of a song, instead of the whole songs.

"I feel like I've started this dance - dancing one foot in the redrock and rivers and biking and meeting rural folks and everyday folks everywhere, and one foot in the urban land, on the computer, paying the cell phone bill, updating the blog...

I want to get more and more on the first foot, less on the last"

Using a Human-Powered Amplifier sponsored and engineered by Rock The Bike, Shake Your Peace is rocking shows this month in Utah. The band's 700 mile bicycle-based tour began April 2nd in Salt Lake City, and includes stops at college towns, cities, and mountain towns, not to mention hot springs. Lead singer and guitarist Gabe Dominguez grew up in Utah and feels an ongoing connection to the youth in the state. He tours by bicycle to inspire a new generation about their environmental choices, and to increase the magic of his tour.