Less Rattle, More Cowbell

About six months ago, I noticed a new trend in music. I always have music on in the car, and sometime around April, I discovered that the latest in music engineering and produciton seemed to be a recurring rattle in each and every song, in the whole world, old and new.

Then I realized that wasn't really the case, that the music was still okay, but that the speaker in the door of my car was rattling. Regardless, since I've spent the last six months or so listening to music with an increasingly pronounced rattle at all of the important moments in a song, even when I hear songs in my head they . . . have the rattle.

It started small. And it has progressively gotten worse each and every livelong day during the past six months. When I realized what it was, I wasn't very happy that I was going to have to take the inside of the Jeep door off to solve this problem.

So, as I tend to do when something frightens me, I put it off, hoped it would heal itself if I ignored it, and I decided I could deal with the rattle for awhile until it healed itself. I had hopes that the speaker was just loose, and not broken.

But when my dad and I got into the door last Saturday, that wasn't the case. The speaker was certainly rattling, and broken, and definitely ruining my music experience. And I had decided that I just couldn't take it anymore.

Long story short, turns out the premium speakers in my Jeep can only be purchased at the dealership. So, I sold a kidney to purchase a new speaker for my Jeep last week. It's apparently a very fancy speaker, and I figured I use the speakers in my Jeep more often than I use that one kidney. So, I feel good about it.

The first time my dad and I ever delved into the world of replacing car audio thingies together is when I had my very first car when I was in highschool: the 1987 white Ford Tempo. It was an awesome piece of machinery that had one of those old radios with the push buttons that you had to push in all the way to get that little orange line to move up and down the dial when you wanted to tune in a preset station.

I decided that I wanted a tape player and a digital radio tuner for the Tempo (you know, so that my friends would stop laughing at my archaic radio), so my dad helped me get the tape deck and we closed ourselves in the garage one weekend to install the new radio ourselves.

I don't remember all of the details, but I remember that it was quite a process with lots of wires and instructions and fitting my tiny hands into small places to hook things up under my dad's direction. We worked hard and got the old radio out and the new one in. Then we fired it up and . . . it worked!

We were geniuses!!!

Until . . . we opened and closed the car door and the radio went on and off with the dome light in the car. Turns out we had wired it into the door/dome light thingie.

I figured that would probably get annoying after like, a day. So, we rewired it. Then it was fine. And . . . AWESOME. Y'all, I had a TAPE PLAYER in my car!!!

All that to say, today's speaker replacement in the Jeep was MUCH easier. It took about 10 minutes. Car doors and speakers are made almost so you can't mess them up (I say that now that we've successfully replaced the speaker without messing it up).

And y'all, IT IS AMAZING!! The "premium" is now back in my sound system, and I pretty much just wanted to drive around the rest of the day listening to every song I've listened to in the past six months so that I can now hear everything WITHOUT the rattle.

It's like all new music, y'all. Even my Jackson 5 collection....

Of course, I didn't drive around the rest of the day because now that I have a (not cheap) new speaker, I can't afford gas to put in the Jeep.

Oh well. Now I can sing at the top of my lungs again in the car and the acoustics will compliment my voice. Or at least now I can crank up the bass again to drown myself out.

I do loves me some bass.

If anyone needs me tomorrow, I will be taking apart the old speaker because I am determined to figure out what broke and how it works. Because that's the way my genius brain works, y'all.

C.T.