No more helmet speakers!

[Wanderer]

I've never found a good mix of speakers and ear protection for MC commo, so after much obsessing I finally bit the bullet and chopped up my MotoComm to see what I could do. I realized I could splice in a 3.5mm (1/8) female headphone jack where the speakers used to be and use some earbuds. With a bit of engineerig I could have both the mic and be able to hear my pillion, plus ear protection.

First:

The intact headset. It has these cool blade style quick connects, too bad I couldn't use them somehow.

These came from radio Shack, 5 bucks a pair. The quality is pretty decent. I don't like that the outer body has plastic threads. I didnt see another way to make these but I dont know how much abuse they'll take. They take a good bit of force to insert the male side of the headphones. I'll have to be careful.

Bye Bye Speakers. The cords were a shielded positive lead wrapped in the ground lead. The upper one is before I stripped the insulation off.

I realized shortly after pairing the leads up and soldering them to the terminals that I had made them into mono sound. Further inspection of the other jack revealed that the stress relief tang is actually the ground, allowing each speaker to have its own hot lead. Oops. I'm not an audiophile anyway. So attach the leads to the tabs on the seperated jack and heres the result, soldered, double shrinkwrapped and taped:

I wanted the jack to be secure and also have a place to secure the extra earbud cord so I chose to loop the jack back toward the conndector for the Junction box. To keep it from getting kinked and brekaing the fragile wires I shrink wrapped a section of paired 18g wire to the cord to give it a backbone.

Secured back on itself, it gave me a nice loop to anchor a small string to and attach that to the chinstrap rivet to prevent it from being pulled out of my helmet.

Here is the finished product.

This is how it worked for me. every helmet is different, and every head. I'd seriously plan this out for your helmet and noggin prior to the first wire snip.

The cord is rather bulky and it took some creative and specific placement to get it comfortable. I didn't have to modify anything in the helmet, but I'd be prepared to cut a small notch/tunnel if need be.

 

[Dangerous Dave]

So you now have earbuds that plug into your intercom system??

 

[oldryder]

I've tried both. For me (with poor hearing in one ear) good quality helmet speakers with foam earplugs worked better than earplug style headphones (ER6i's) for all day travel.

Even the ER6i's got uncomfortable after several hours.

 

[Dangerous Dave]

I've tried both. For me (with poor hearing in one ear) good quality helmet speakers with foam earplugs worked better than earplug style headphones (ER6i's) for all day travel.

+1. That's what I've been doing for years and very happy with it. I tried earbuds but couldn't seem to put on/take off my helmet without them trying to rip my ears off. I can go long periods with foam earplugs comfortably. And when I first got my Chatterbox + MP3 player, I found I could hear passages in the music I'd never heard before. I have my helmet speakers installed in such a way that aside from the tuneage coming out, I'm unaware of their presence. I'm cool with that.

 

[Wanderer]

So you now have earbuds that plug into your intercom system??

Yes. I can plug ANY sound delivery method that uses a 3.5mm jack into there. Including a quality set of speakers if I soldered in the male side to them.

I plan to someday have a custom set like Westone or Big Ears made for me. This was just the groundwork that opened up my options. I've ridden a SS1K with earbuds in, my ears were sore at the end of the day, about as much as foam earplugs.

I've tried more than one commo system including a StarCom, and I haven't found a set of speakers I was happy with overall. The most common trade off was good speakers were too big, small speakers were bad quality. This, I believe, solves my problem.

Report will follow when weather permits.

 

[moldman]

I did the same thing with my Camos system using the same RS plugs. I just bought the smallest pair of ear buds I could find and wrap Earfuze around them and I am good to go. Music and phone sound is great.

 

[ejworthen]

Different types and sizes of tips can be bought for the ER6i's. I found the flanges that came with them were too large, I bought the smaller ones and find them to be very comfortable now. You can buy foam ones simlar to the foam earplugs also.

https://www.etymotic.com/ephp/er6i-acc.aspx

 

[Aasland]

Different types and sizes of tips can be bought for the ER6i's. I found the flanges that came with them were too large, I bought the smaller ones and find them to be very comfortable now. You can buy foam ones simlar to the foam earplugs also.
https://www.etymotic.com/ephp/er6i-acc.aspx

Those foam ones are only good for a couple. After a week or two they don't expand anymore.

What worked for me where the custom-molded Challengers. I can't recommend them anymore though .. recent attempts to get a replacement pair involved five impressions, three months, and they're still not as good as the first pair I had. My wife experienced the same :-(

I also hacked into the speaker cable to use my Challengers. I have since learned that there is already an adapter for the J&M that does this.

Next time around I might put more effort into speakers+earplugs.