Greetings,

I've had to recently change jobs.

This means that rather than driving to work in absolute bliss. I now have to sit in a train for nearly an hour.

I have seen some information about running the Empeg from a battery and using headphones, how easy is this to do for a novice and has anyone done it ??

The other alternative was to get a portable MP3 player.
I had been thinking of getting the Rio 800. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Or could you suggest anything else. Does anyone know if SonicBlue do discounts for brand loyalty ??

Thanks in advance.

Ian L.

All you need is a battery big enough to power it for a couple hours. This is a 3 Amp-Hour portable with carrying case. I recently picked one like this up at BJ's Wholesale for about $25, and they're getting more popular in the market, so you could probably find one nearby.
Doug Burnside (Tanstaafl) used a small battery like this to power his Bikempeg, but his was 5 Amp-hours. He said he could get 8 empeg-hours out of it without Deep-cycling the battery.
Once you have the battery, you just need a backpack/briefcase/something big enough to fit the Empeg and battery, and then a pair of low-impedence earphones with an RCA converter.
Keep in mind though, it's gonna be heavy.

Once you have the battery, you just need a backpack/briefcase/something big enough to fit the Empeg and battery, and then a pair of low-impedence earphones with an RCA converter.

Just a thought off the top of my head. You might be able to convert the Empeg Carry Case pretty quickly for this. No sholder strap but anextra pouch for the battery and handles to carry it.

Greg

How about a hard disk based portable player. There are several to choose from, including the NeoJukebox.

Just a thought off the top of my head. You might be able to convert the Empeg Carry Case pretty quickly for this.

One thing you hve to keep in mind here... the empeg is designed to play in a horizontal position (give or take 8 degrees, more or less) and if you have it stuffed into a backpack, the hard drive is not going to be in proper orientation. This is bad for the disk drive spindle bearings, and will cause premature failure.

When I built my bikempeg, I was careful about the orientation of the empeg, as well as being careful about shock mounting it in an inch and a half of foam rubber on a platform that in turn is mounted on a flexible handlebar.

As far as headphones go... you have to use low impedence, high quality walkman style headphones. The line-outs won't drive larger headphones.

As far as weight... the battery I use weighs about as much as one and a half empegs. Be sure you want to carry that much weight around!

One of the portable MP3 players might be more appropriate in this application.

tanstaafl.

You could take a cheap laptop around for all this trouble.

As far as headphones go... you have to use low impedence, high quality walkman style headphones. The line-outs won't drive larger headphones.

You might want to check out some headphone amps.

You might want to check out some headphone amps.

Ummm... with the cheapest one costing over $150 (and never mind the one going for nearly $5,000) I think I'll pass!

tanstaafl.