For those of us who can't afford an HSX but are availing ourselves of the blow-out pricing on RioCar, has anyone built a home-enclosure for a Mk2/2a?

I'm thinking something small and wood, not using the docking station, but just something simple to level-out the unit and disguise the bare-metal sides, sort of a non-docking dock, if you will.

I just thought if someone had tried this, I might get some feedback as to what the experiences have been, pitfalls, etc. I'm concerned about cooling, so I'll have to work something out to compensate and allow the holes to stay unblocked...

All feedback appreciated!

I know there has been some here that used wood, but are having difficulty finding an appropiate metal enclosure. As far as w/o using the docking station I don't think they have. Use the search form on this BBS and it should show those posts.

It's most likely that you will have to buy a docking station to get the wiring loom. At this point you may as well just use the docking station. However, I was able to acquire a spare loom at the cost of $45 before the SB merger.

Without the docking sled you'll have to manually plug in the RCA connections and power unless you figure out some very simple and fool-proof way of getting the onboard RCA and AC jacks to merge to something mounted on your wooden enclosure. Seems a bit difficult to me.

The price of an extra docking unit make it unreasonable in my opinion. A better deal would have been to simply buy a brand new 10GB player. Which is what I did.

I'll probably make some type of enclosure, perhaps out of wood, but using the docking sled of the new unit. If I was going to do something without the docking sled, it would be more of a simple shell, and not much of a docking unit. Something like that, with an exposed back, would be very simple to build. Since I want to avoid all this manual connecting and the wear and tear associated with it, I'm going the sled route.

Bruno

PS. nevermind the typos. :)

The price of an extra docking unit make it unreasonable in my opinion. A better deal would have been to simply buy a brand new 10GB player. Which is what I did.

Argh! I am so stupid! I did buy an extra sled with my new 60GB unit. Why the heck didn't I add another $100 and got another empeg with it!? Ah, I guess I was so excited about being finally able to have a spare empeg for the price of disk upgrade that I wasn't thinking very clearly...

Well, some new happy 10GB empeg owner is glad this occured to me only now....

Kind of what I'm thinking.... I ordered a spare player, but I wanted to use the extra sled for car #2, so I'd have 1 player that roamed between both cars, and one that lived 'at home' and stayed in it's little docking sled, except to sync, and the back would be exposed. I'm not worried about wear-and-tear because it won't move much. I was just worried if I built something that was fully enclosed, the unit might overheat.

If you block the vents then there's a chance it will get uncomfortably hot. If you put the empeg into an enclosure the size of an average stereo component, then there should be enough breathing room for it. Further, if it is not to be removable, then you could mount it with the top cover off. You could also easily add a quiet fan (you get what you pay for with fans, so don't skimp if that's a step you'll take).

I'm looking forward to seeing what sorts of things people some up with. I'm sure with the xtra units there will be more exploration into things like home docks. Not to mention all the new people that have joined the BBS in the past two weeks.

Bruno