Product news: London designer Paul Cocksedge has launched a gadget on Kickstarter that plays music wirelessly through vintage speakers (+ movie).
Paul Cocksedge created the small portable device to give old and unused speakers a new lease of life.
The Vamp connects to the back of any speaker via a two-way jack or red and black speaker wires, and can stream music from bluetooth devices within a ten metre range.
Shaped like a cube with a corner sliced off, it can be attached anywhere on the speaker using a foam pad or a magnet that pairs with one inside.
The battery inside the device that powers the speaker can be kept on constant charge while hooked up using a USB port or power adapter and has a rechargeable life of over ten hours when not plugged in.
The Vamp is available in a choice of red, white or black for £35 through the Kickstarter campaign, which runs until the 28 April.
Cocksedge suspended a mysterious neon phone number above a London street for our Seven Designers for Seven Dials installations, and contributed a lamp made from heat-shrunk polystyrene cups to the Stepney Green Design Collection we curated.
Photography is by Mark Cocksedge.
Paul Cocksedge sent us the following information:
Paul Cocksedge launches The Vamp on Kickstarter
Thanks to modern technology, we’re now able to carry our entire music libraries in a range of portable devices, from laptops to mobiles and tablets. For sheer sound quality, however, the devices have not matched the superior audio quality of the conventional speaker. And portable Bluetooth speakers, which give consumers the freedom to link devices wirelessly and play music at any location, are expensive. Now, however, an established British designer, already renowned in international design circles for his innovation and creativity, has come up with a way to bring life back to the millions of speakers which still exist in our homes.
London-based designer Paul Cocksedge has created The Vamp which will launch on Kickstarter, a crowd-funding platform for creative projects. The Vamp is a gadget which allows traditional hi fi speakers to communicate with today's world of portable digital devices, allowing them to be used in the house, the garden or the park – in fact, anywhere. Old speakers can now be transformed into a portable Bluetooth speaker –for as little as £35. New technology can quickly make our gadgets and appliances obsolete, The Vamp makes a real contribution to allowing us to retain the craftsmanship and quality of well-made speakers and use them to embrace the newest wireless technology.
The Vamp is a cute cube shaped object with an inner magnet that allows it to stick to the side of the speaker. The internal battery can power any size speaker and means all the wires and clutter we are used to seeing are gone. It can receive sound via Bluetooth from any Bluetooth device within 10m.
Paul Cocksedge says: “For me, reusing perfectly good technology makes sense. Hearing the rich sound coming out of these older speakers in a new way is a delight. They are a part of our music history.”
For updates on the project, follow @PaulCocksedgeSt and #VampYourAmp on Twitter.