Great thread. I am looking to do the same. One question: why do you use 3 wires when the original had 4? Did this change it from stereo to mono? Why not just cut off the speakers and wire in ear buds to the existing wires? When you removed the speakers and wire did that effect the FM signal since the atenna is in the wire (or so I was told). I'm not that good with wiring so any information you can provide me with would be great. Again thanks for the detailed description and photos. Please shoot me an e-mail and any more information you have to the following. Rjmurr325@hotmail.com Thanks Bob
I think I understand and see what you did. You jumped the solder on the back side of the black wire. Again you have to forgive me as wiring isn't necessarily my thing. I'm going to purchase a unit and give it a try. Btw I am doing this cause I ride with a half helmet and my ears are exposed. Do you see any issue with this? I see some posts that say there is a lot of wind noise if you don't have a full face or full shield. What do you think?
Sounds like you have the wiring figured out... The - is common between both right and left speakers... The reason I did not splice the ear buds to the existing speaker wires is that the wire that Cardo uses does not have conventional insulation on it, instead they use a type of varnish that is extremely difficult to work with...<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o> I do not have any experience with half helmets but I dont see why this wouldnt work for you... <o></o> Good luck...<o></o>
For very small wires, they don't use a typical plastic insulation that you can strip off easily. The thin wires are coated with varnish to keep them from shorting against each other. This lets the manufacturer use very small wires. To modify these wires - it is a total pain. The varnish must be carefully scraped off to enable the wires to be connected or soldered to anything else. The wires are very tiny and the varnish is hard to see. So you aren't sure when you have a clean wire to work with. That is what makes this modification so clever - you avoid cutting any of these tiny wires and can work directly on the circuit board inside the Cardo. A work of true genius! Mine has been working great for several months now.
Ok I ordered the G4 system and will be making this mod. Now the only issue is using it with my half helmet. Any suggestions on mounting it? I don't want a perminent installation. Not looking to tape it to the helmet. I thought about clamping it on with the included hardware but my helmet doesn't have any space to clamp it on. The foam interior is glued to the shell and the foam comes to the edge of the outer shell. My thought is to fabricate a price of this aluminum to slide between the outer and inner shell with just enough hanging out to secure the G4 to. What do you think? With this I can slide the unit in and out when I want to use it. If anyone has installed this on a half helmet I sure would like your thoughts and input.
I wonder if one ofbthese would work. The G4 would need to work with power connected. I imagine this would give you 20 hours with no problem. http://richardsolo.com/richardsolo1800forblackberrysmartphone.aspx The G4 uses the near-universal micro-USB power connector (like a Blackberry)
I just got my Scala Rider G4 and will be doing the ear bud mod. I have a question are the ear buds too loud? I read in another forum that the ear buds that guy used were too loud even on the lowest setting? Any input would be appreciated before I mod my NEW G4's.
With my Etymotic ER6i in-ear monitors and the G4, I do find that the volume control is quite coarse. Each bump up/down is a bit too much. It isn't much of a problem as you can fine tune the output volume on the iPhone/iPod easily. I do wish they would fully integrate the 3.5mm plug for us earbud users AND provide an extra "monitor" button on the G4 to pump the microphone input into the earbuds. This would help at gas stations or yelling to your buddy next to you (if they don't have their OWN G4) at a light.
Quick question. I ordered and received the g4 but can't find the 3.5mm jack quick enough to get the mod done in time for my week long ride on the west coast on Monday. What do you think about just cutting off the speakers and soldering on some earbuds. Will this work for now? I figure I can cut the wire just below the speaker? Thoughts?
Sure - it will work, but it is a much harder modification. The tiny wires on the speakers are varnish-coated and hard to clean and solder. I did this to mine before finding this thread. I lost a bit of sound quality and had one circuit cutting out after a few months. I attribute both to my poor skills in stripping and soldering these minute wires. You may have better results.
It's done. I didn't have time to do the phone jack mod as shown but I did wire in the ear buds. At first I was going blind trying to remove the cotton fibers from the wire when I stripped it but I found that soldering burned off the fibers. It's all tested and it works fine. Great reception on the phone and intrrcom. Sorry I tried to attach a photo but for some reason I can't from my IPad.
I have tried the mod on my Q2 twice now (with a new audio kit the second time). Each time, I have great sound for music, but sound from the Cardo itself (i.e. intercom, bluetooth) stops working. Or, to be more specific, it's extremely scratchy and attenuated. I can't figure out why - the first time I figured I might have screwed something up soldering, but the second time I was very careful and had the exact same result. I tried hooking up leads to the Antenna ports (AN-L, AN-R) in case it somehow expected an antenna there, and it made no difference. You commented on the complication of the 3 wires vs 2 per side - did you have to do anything with those antenna wires? Any issues with your Q2?
I am sorry but I do not remember how I connected the wires on the Q2... I do remember that I had to experiment quite a bit in order to get everything working properly... I think that I soldered some wires to the terminal board and then used some test leads to connect to 3.5mm headphone jack and began trying all configurations, listening to music, making calls, etc seeing what worked... Because there are 6 terminals on the circuit board, and only 3 on the jack means that some of the terminals will be jumped together, just do not remember which ones... I wish I could be more help on this...
I used the g4 for the first time this week. Yesterday I used them with a buddy bike to bike. At low speed no issue with static. Remember I have half helmets. At high speed there was wind noise. I notice when my buddy put his hand in front of the mike there was no noise. After we stopped for a while there was excessive static to the point we had to turn them off. Today I covered the front of the mike with duct tape. I found that by pushing the channel A button on both it eliminated the static.We rode about 250 miles today with no issue. Intercom was great and clear. Some minor wind noise because we had heavy cross winds all day. The wind noise was nowhere near the noise level one would have riding without headphones or ear plugs so I think the tape was a huge success. As for the static, it happen once but was cleared up by resetting channel A as I noted above. Here's a question: my better half wanted to listen to her IPod so I plugged into the auxiliary jack. Found out then that the intercom(vox) doesn't work while using the aux port. Any idea how I can over ride that? I thought it would work but after referring to the manual, page 12 has a note that reads "while listening to your mp3 player, the VOX feature is disabled". Any solutions?