Coachella

Good rule of camping is quietness is the golden rule. Camping is supposed to be an event shared with nature. Years ago when we camped in the Catskills, we tended not to go to our seasonal campsite on holidays. Holidays like Memorial Day, 4th of July, etc., are magnets dates for bad campers. Noisy kids, loud music, fireworks, etc. So when we purchased Coachella and came equipped with ‘marine-grade’ exterior speakers we never thought we would ever use them. We finally checked them out this spring and they sounded like crap. The weather had taken it’s toll on the speaker cones so I decided to try and change them out.

Removing the speakers from the coach was was a difficult task. Jayco screws the speakers into the wall and use butyl tape/clay (also known as Plumbers Putty) to keep the speaker-wall barrier as water tight as can be expected. Peeling the speaker off the wall required a lot of patients, a very sharp box cutter utility knife and time. Each speaker took about 30 minutes to pry off the wall. Once the speaker was removed I could see the speaker cones had more or less vaporized even though they were made of Mylar).

Magnadyne no longer manufactures the WR65W but rather now only WR65B (black). In a way it was nice to see a manufacturer still making a form-fit-function exact fit after 11 years in production. Magnadyne makes a higher wattage speaker in white but it would not fit into the existing coach speaker holes. I purchased the black versions for about $40 and they arrived in two days.

The chocolate colored Greyhawk decal is somewhat beat-up around the front speaker, and my handy work removing the speaker put a few nicks in the decal in addition to the ones already present. Oddly a black sharpie blends in quite well once the ink dries. I touched this area up and it now looks really nice (the picture above is before the sharpie fix).

I’m sure we won’t use the speakers too often, but occasionally having a cocktail watching a sunset and softly listening to some Dave Mason may make for a nice evening.