[Anthony Woodle]

Hey everyone!

Recently, I purchased a talking, animated grim reaper prop from my local Halloween store. (I'm brand new to the forums so I can't post a link to the video yet, but search YouTube for "Winged Reaper Ultimate Animated Prop" )

I absolutely love him. The problem is that the attached speaker it comes with is deplorable. I can barely hear it, and the quality is awful. I'm placing it towards the front of my cemetery, so when people walk by, they will hear him as they pass. But with the built in speaker, it will be drowned out by my cemetery ambiance that I always have playing.

I was wondering if anyone knows if it's possible to somehow connect the wires going to the built in speakers to a 3.5mm jack, and connect it to some external speakers? I'm not too experienced with wiring, so I don't want to do anything just yet. I looked around the forums and couldn't find anyone else asking this question. Apologies if I missed it.

Thanks in advance!

 

[CreepyCreations]

That should be fairly simple to do. The risk, of course, is that you might damage something. However, doing something like this is reasonably low-risk.
You'll have to get access to the internal speaker directly, which means opening the prop up. I'm not familiar with this particular prop, so I can't offer any suggestions as to how easy or difficult this might be. In any event, you will be voiding any warranty the minute you do it, just so you are aware.
That being said, it should be easy enough to clip ONE of the wires off the speaker and solder an extra wire to that so you can attach a jack to it. I recommend leaving the one wire attached to the speaker so it stays put and won't float around and short to something. Solder a second wire to the one still attached to the speaker and you have your two wires ready for the jack. Have you been able to determine how many speakers there are? One or two?
Great looking prop, by the way... I checked out a video on YouTube. I seriously doubt the audio sounds THAT good, though! LOL

 

[DaveintheGrave]

Years ago I had one of those "Mr. Christmas" light show boxes and I wanted to replace the speaker with a female audio jack. Then I could plug in a FM transmitter and transmit the music to car radios instead of having it blasted across the yard.

I just cut the two speaker wires and soldered in a mono audio jack that I bought at Radio shack. Worked great! And still does.
You should be able to figure which wire goes where on the jack by trying them on the terminals and listening for the sound to come out.

What CreepyCreations said sounds like good advice too!

 

[Anthony Woodle]

Thanks! I was thinking it might be something as simple as that, but I didn't want to go snipping anything and damage it beyond repair.

The built in speaker is actually incredibly easy to access. Here's a picture of it:



I'm just not sure which wire should go where.

 

[JeffHaas]

The two yellow wires are the ones going to the speaker. You can clip them and solder them to a mono audio jack, which then will go into whatever speaker or boom box you have. I suggest something that has its own power, so you can adjust the volume of the sound.

To test this, get a pair of alligator leads and clip them to the existing speaker where the yellow wires connect (scrape away the hot glue to get a connection) and then the other end of the alligator leads goes to your mono jack, and into your speaker system.

 

[J-Man]

Good advice from Jeff, you'll most likely need a powered speaker or amplifier. The prop probably doesn't have enough wattage to drive a decent speaker on it's own.

 

[motoshane]

A good cheap versatile amp you could use is the Lepai LP-2020A+ which you can get for $20 on amazon. I just use boom box speakers I have laying around. Check thrift shops for speakers in boxes.

 

[Anthony Woodle]

Thank you guys so much! It worked!
I have an extra pair of powered computer speakers, which it works with perfectly.

I even made a video about it!

This place is seriously the best.

 

[JeffHaas]

Glad it worked!

 

[DaveintheGrave]

Great! I'm glad you were able to solve your problem!