That's more like it...

 ,,,a decent sound system in the bakkie. Nothing beats it.

I had a "decent" system in until recently, in the form of a traditional head unit and 600w Cadence active subwoofer.

But then the sub went "pop" and stopped working. Looks like it's a power supply problem. All the connections are in place and there is power to the unit according to the volt-meter.

If there's one thing I don't like when I'm driving by myself, it is complete silence. I need music. Any music.

For a while I have been using my bone-conduction earphones bluetooth-connected to my phone, and they're decent enough for blocking out the other shoppers as I'm walking/dancing around Spar, but in the car I want something with a bit of "oomph". So I decided to treat myself.

I went online to see what my options were. First, I went onto Temu to see what was available in the active sub department. Some nice units, but not a lot. And when I compared them to local units and pricing, I thought I may as well buy local.

So I ordered a new digital touch-screen head unit, a Targus. It has all the bells-and-whistles, bluetooth, USB input and output, phone connection, Android Auto, and a decent 4x 65w output power to the speakers. Nice unit, at a nice price. Sold.

Then the active sub. I ordered a 10inch Black Widow, at what I thought was 1,200w output (more about that later). Compared to the old 600w, it should be more than enough power for a bakkie's sound. Nice unit, at a nice price. Sold.

I had to wait about a week for the units to be delivered, which wasn't a problem. I'd done without decent sound for a while, so what was another week. In fact, the original delivery estimate was fourteen days, but they arrived a week early. Excellent!

There's nothing quite like unboxing new gadgets. People can say what they like about "Aaah, it's just a new xxxxx", but look them in the eye and look for the glint. It will be there. They're amp'ed (pardon the pun) to open their new xxxxx.

First, I open the active sub, thinking it probably works off the same type of connections and should be easy to install. Plus I'll be able to test it on the old head unit before I swap that out.

Bingo! The connections are all the same except for the boost toggle. The physical size of the unit is also slightly larger than the old sub, but it's easy enough to install the new one with a couple of self-tapping screws on the firewall behind the back seat. Unfortunately, there's not much place in a bakkie for something like this and they are typically installed where I put it. I swap out the old boost toggle cable for the new one, and power the unit up. Green lights are a good sign.

The sound is good, very strong bass as I wanted, but it's a bit lacking in "oomph", so I swap out the head units to see how much of a difference there will be. The old head unit only had 45w output per channel, so I'm expecting good things on the new one.

The electrical and speaker connections are all identical to the old unit, so it is literally "plug and play" with the head units. Excellent! I had visions of clipping and joining wire harnesses, but not so!!

Then I hit the one and only snag with the new head units. As the new unit is digital, it has a slightly higher screen than the old one and does not fit 100% in the dashboard slot, despite the unit itself being the advertised 1U height. It's actually the bakkie's dashboard that's the problem. The bakkie is19yrs old this year, and radio configurations/heights were different back then. Ah well. It's in, but not quite the way it was intended to fit.

Then I notice something on the active sub's box....... It isn't 1,200w output power..... It is 12,000w...!!! Yep, 12,000w of sound!!!

Now I can't wait to hear the new head unit. Power it up, plug in my USB module with some music and wait for it to start playing. It starts off nice and low, and I use the remote control to turn the volume up slowly (for some unknown reason, you can only alter the volume by remote control...not the best idea, Targus). Suddenly, I'm starting to smile. I am loving this new sound. It is mind-blowingly loud!!! Even mother comes out to see what's going on and just shakes her head at me.

There is a bit of reverberation on the active sub, so I adjust the input gain down a little to prevent that. And all of a sudden, I'm loving the sound in the bakkie again.

I used to only take the bakkie out every couple of weeks or so, mostly when I did my NSRI rounds to check all the Pink Buoys in the area. Now, however, I've driven the bakkie more in the last two weeks than I have in the last two months.

My next plan is to get the old 600w active sub repaired and install that in the runabout car. It is sadly lacking in decent sound. Always has been, but that's what you can expect of an entry-level runabout.

Rock on, people... 😎

Look after yourselves out there, folks...