hey there, you seem into your stuff whereas leds are concerned, could you offer any advice on setting up a lightshow on one of these monsters? its powered by 12v, i gutted it, is there any modules or anything youd recommend?

Ok, when I was student, I remember well the most famous IC we use to make VU METERS is the AN6878. It can drive 8 leds and the construction is very easy, if you like the electronics and you have the basics knowledge, I can make a schematic for you. Is a good 12V circuit if you want to add LED VU meters to any Box.

More complex, if you want to add a SPECTRUM ANALYZER, it requires many circuits, like one called "pink noise generator" and a multi-led driver to activate from 5 to 10 led arrays. Is more difficult because you have to "calibrate" the audio signals by "octaves" and requires some more logic IC's to generate the correct audio signal in MHz and KHz.

In my entire student's life I only construct one, with five LED arrays, and using a car equalizer as a frequency generator.

the LM3915 is logarithmic and is also a good choice and can use an analog front end with multi feedback bandpass filter for how ever many bands......the circuit is fairly large unless you do it via DSP.....which then comes down to how much you want to spend on this part of the project.

Oh yeah, I forgot the LM3915... Is a good driver too, this is more attractive because it can drive 10 LEDs and can works from 3 to 25V.

Another great Led driver is the LP3943 from NATIONAL SEMICONDUCTOR, this IC can drive 16 LEDs!

i can solder, but thats about it./ i could probably follow a diagram or instruction too.

i was kinda thinkin about a finished product though.

above was typed a few hours ago. ive since had a rather elaborate plan for vu's for this model. if any of ye have taken it apart, you'll have seen that behind the fake blue spectrum analyzer theres actually accommodation for what looks like a real analyzer.

be interesting to put a 10 bar analyzer in there and power it off a small 9v battery..

ill get back with pics and stuff in a few days... if you were gonna fit it somewhere or do something on a jc that'd be the place to do it...

that won't work, even a simple 5 band 10 bar spectrum will draw almost 3/4 watt, that 9v would last about 15 minutes max....

what about these high capacity ones Kitt?

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-Energizer-High-Energy-9V-Lithiu...p1638Q2em118Q2el1247

i think the normal ones are like 250mah