Subversively Silencing Subwoofers

By  by Keith Goetzman
Published on July 29, 2010
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Do you hate subwoofers like I hate subwoofers? Does the low-fi din of an earth-shaking, bumper-rattling car stereo, detectable from a quarter-mile away and meant to broadcast the owner’s flagrant and rebellious love of bass-heavy hip-hop, make you want to just shut the thing off? If so, I think Make magazine can help us out.

You see, a couple of months ago Make, the do-it-yourself magazine for techno-geeks and home tinkerers, featured plans for the TV-B-Gone hoodie. The TV-B-Gone is a small device that will shut off any TV within range, and the hoodie is meant to conceal this sometimes controversial act by executing it with a mere shift of the zipper.

Now, in its most recent issue, Make features a different DIY creation, the solar car subwoofer, in which the author shares his plans for mounting solar panels on his car to drive his booming speakers. “What’s a road trip without awesome tuneage?” writes the enthusiastic but misguided lad, who’s employing green technology to practice dark arts.

You see where I’m going with this, right? The Subwoofer-B-Gone hoodie. For its next issue, I challenge Make to create a device that will allow me to silence subwoofers–solar powered or not–with my “modded” hoodie. I’m not interested in hearing why it won’t work: I’m leaving it to these genius tinkerers to find a way. Then, the next time some inconsiderate punk is disrupting my day by getting crunk, or hyphy, or grimy, or whatever the hell that horrible sound is, I won’t have to stand for it.

The only problem, perhaps, is that I’d have to wear a hoodie. And do you want to hear how I hate hoodies?

Source: Make

Image by Josef Rousek, licensed under Creative Commons.

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