I wish we had Trasborg’s redneck boom box for parties during the summer in Camden County. I mean occasionally a band will show up for the Fourth of July, but usually we just use the stereo in Joy’s Brat. That makes for some sad parties where all you hear is Earl going on and on about his list and Patti trying to get work. That isn’t exactly a great party.
Of course, I am usually just trying to pet the geese. For some reason, even though they look cute, they sure are mean birds. They honk and try to bite you. And whatever you do, don’t go swimming with them—if you even get near them in the water, they come after you. And boooy are those things quick. I can’t swim faster than a goose, no way, now how. I have the scars on my feet to prove how fast they are. Goose bite scars look funny. Even funnier was a girl I knew once who was feeding the geese bread. Let’s just say she had a lot up top and was wearing a V-neck shirt. Well she’s got a goose scar on her um… er…honker…and I mean the ones below the shoulders.
Maybe not funnier than that, but the funny thing about the boom box is that Trasborg made it just to kill batteries (“Battery Bashing,” March ’13). He put an old Soundstream Rubicon 355 from the mid-’90s in it. Old amps draw more power than new amps do. He thought it was cool because it was a Jeep magazine and he was using a Rubicon amp. But even that didn’t pull enough power, so he had to add halogen lights to it. After the test, I pulled the halogens off and added two LED lights that pulled a lot less power for the same kind of light output. Then the box went on to provide the music for a Toys for Tots drive, a New Year’s Eve party, a few other outdoor parties, and a Memorial Day party.
Memorial Day is where I saw it again, still with that same old amplifier in it, still drawing a lot of power, and I decided to do something about it. The box was no longer meant to kill batteries, it was now providing tunes for all kinds of outdoor parties. So why keep that dinosaur power hog in it? That old Rubicon amp is a five-channel amp, so I decided to keep it simple and go with another five-channel amp. I went with the brand new Kicker KX 800.5. It has a smaller design, lighter weight, runs cooler, and promises less power consumption. Just the thing.
A five-channel amp is kind of cool, and I’m surprised I don’t see more of you guys with them. From winter hard top, to the spring bikini, to the summer no top, to the fall soft top, a stereo in a Jeep is hard to make sound good. A five-channel amp has four full-range channels (front left and right, rear left and right) so that you can fade and balance depending on where your doors are that day. And the fifth channel is for a subwoofer, which does a lot to get rid of that tinny sound when the top is off. My comparisons show just a few ways these new Kicker amps… um…kick.
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