The Rexan Sound System
How we built a solar-powered QSC rig on a psychedelic safari car.
By Joshuah Vincent & Greg Liburd
In early 2017 a crew of longtime Burner friends from around the world went on a safari in South Africa, and on the Savannah we ended every day the way you do there: a sundowner, which means stories, laughter and a drink at dusk. It was a magical, seminal trip. By the end of it we were calling ourselves Sundowners, and we'd decided to bring that ritual to Black Rock City.
Sundowners is an African-diaspora-inspired art collective and Burning Man camp. We build spaces to celebrate the art, music, dance and hospitality of diasporic traditions and speakeasies, with some Afrofuturism mixed in. On playa that comes down to two things. The first is our Shebeen, named after the South African speakeasy. The second is Rexan.
Rexan is our psychedelic safari art car. We started from a 1997 Ford E350 with a V10, cut most of the body off in a workshop in Sparks, and welded a whole new frame and cage around it. Nine years of mutations later there's a two-level viewing deck, a tracker seat up front, zebra-striped LED panels, flame-effect lanterns, 29" custom LED disc "googly eyes" on the front, and a dashboard sound panel loaded with African animal calls. We take riders out on "game drives" to track CAR-nimals, spot ART-ilopes and collect MAN-imals for study. Rexan has been on playa in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023, 2025 and 2026. Next year is our tenth anniversary.
And Rexan's heart is our community, and its voice is its sound system.
Radical Ritual
2017
A simple sound system gave our safari a soundtrack.
I, Robot
2018
Our sound system brought wildlife calls and music to the riders.
Metamorphoses
2019
Our first DJ setup turned the safari into a dance floor.
Waking Dreams
2022
Switching to QSC brought dance-club sound to Rexan.
Animalia
2023
More speakers and a second sub brought the full rig together.
Tomorrow Today
2025
Repurposing the monitors helped us adapt Rexan's sound system.
Axis Mundi
2026
By 2026 all four K12.2s were working again, and that's the rig we run today.
Where we started
Our first years were focused on mutating the vehicle so we could get through the Burning Man DMV (Department of Mutant Vehicles) review on playa. Every art car has to be sufficiently mutated to get licensed, one license for day and one for night, so our sound system was secondary to that goal. In 2017 and 2018 we ran two Behringer speakers mounted at the back for the people riding in the cab, with a sub and amp we built. There was no DJ setup. The system was there so the guides could talk to riders and so we could play African wildlife sounds, ambient and world music. In 2019 we added two more Behringers facing forward, a sub and our first DJ setup. It started out as a safari tour with a soundtrack, and by 2019 it was turning into a dance floor.
Being a crew of some talented and seasoned DJs, it was inevitable that the music took over. The DJs playing African and African-inspired music at our sundowner ceremonies and pop-ups kept getting an amazing response on playa, so the sound system had to grow up. When we came back after the pandemic in 2022 we switched to QSC and never looked back.
The first QSC rig in 2022 was two K12.2s up top, two more K12.2s as DJ monitors and a single KS118 sub. It took us from a system that stayed under 90 dB at 30 feet to one we'd compare to an intimate dance club. In 2023 we added a second KS118, put four K12.2s up top and moved to using K10.2s as DJ monitors. That was the system basically complete. 2025 was a scramble. Two of the K12.2s wouldn't work, so we moved K10.2s up top next to the two good ones, and we tried K8.2s as DJ monitors. The K8s kept failing on us (those heat fans are just too small for the dust at BRC). By 2026 all four K12.2s were working again, and that's the rig we run today.
The rig today
This is how Rexan is set up now:
- Subs: 2× QSC KS118, stacked on the passenger (right) side.
- Tops: 4× QSC K12.2 mounted high on the horizontal top bar, firing out over the deck and the crowd.
- Monitors: 2× QSC K10.2 in the middle, pointed at the DJ booth.
- Booth: Pioneer XDJ-1000 decks into a DJM-900NXS mixer.
It's rated in the "dance club" class (90 dB and up at under 100 feet).
Overhead, to scale
Side view from the passenger side, to scale · front →
- K12.2 ×4 in pairs at the ends of the top bar, 6 ft back from the front. 75° coverage, drawn out to 20 ft from the top bar.
- K10.2 ×2 at the ends of the open windscreen frame, about 7.5 ft up. 90° coverage, cross-firing back at the DJ.
- KS118 ×2 stacked on the passenger bracket, about 2 to 6.5 ft up. Rings at 5, 10 and 20 ft.
- K12.2 lower edge, 52° down: lands about 2 ft past the hood.
- K12.2 on-axis, 15° down: reaches ear height about 20 ft from the bar, 14 ft past the hood.
- K12.2 upper edge, 22° up: carries over heads to the far field.
| At distance | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model | Qty | Coverage | 1 m | 10 ft | 25 ft | 50 ft | 100 ft |
| K12.2(tops) | 4 | 75° conical | 132 | 122 | 114 | 108 | 102 |
| K10.2(DJ monitors) | 2 | 90° conical | 130 | 120 | 112 | 106 | 100 |
| KS118(sub) | 1 | Omni | 136 | 126 | 118 | 112 | 106 |
| KS118 ×2(stacked) | 2 | Omni, coupled | 142 | 132 | 124 | 118 | 112 |
How we estimated this
- Per-box peak SPL from QSC specs, free field, −6 dB per doubling of distance.
- Continuous (music) level runs about 6 dB below peak. Stacked subs add about 6 dB from coupling.
- Overlapping K12.2 cones add about 3 dB in front. Ignores the crowd and high-frequency air absorption.
- The tops sit about 10.5 ft up, so inside about 10 ft the K12.2 levels run about 3 dB lower (slant distance).
- Heights of the cab, frame, DJ and sub bracket are estimates. Cones and rings are illustrative.
"What's your sound system?"
The two main questions we get from people dancing in front of the car are "What's the name of this car?" and "What's the sound system?" People come up to the booth all the time to tell us how good Rexan sounds, and how much they love hearing our music on it. It's a big part of why we're writing this post.
Our music is mostly Afro-Latin infused house: tribal, a bit weird, full of bleeps and bloops, and mostly on the house tip. We also dive into Brazilian funk, amapiano and unexpected music from all over the world. That kind of music needs real low end and clean, clear tops, and the QSC rig gives us both.
Rexan's size is part of the magic too. A lot of the big art cars are too big or too loud to play in the city, so they head out past 10 o'clock and into deep playa before they turn it up. Rexan is small enough to cruise through the city with 30 people on it bumping the music, and we love it. People come out of their camps to party with us as we roll by, and the love and energy they give back is a huge part of why we do this.
We turn it down near the Temple and anywhere else that calls for reverence, and we save the full volume for the trash fence. In 2026 we planned sunrise runs on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, playing out at the fence from around 5am well into the morning.
Keeping it green
Early on we powered the lights and sound with a pair of Honda 2000 generators. That worked, but it wasn't who we wanted to be. We've been working toward Burning Man's sustainability roadmap for years, and in 2022 we moved the whole light and sound system onto batteries.
Today's power system has four parts:
- A 13.6 kWh lithium iron phosphate battery bank (multiple 23S LiFePO4 batteries in parallel) in a box at the back of the car, carrying the sound system and our roughly 4,000 LEDs.
- About 600W of solar on the frame above the DJ booth, charging the batteries through the day. We upgraded the array during our Reno build weeks this year.
- The engine's alternator, which runs an inverter and charges the batteries while Rexan is driving. In 2023 we automated the charger so it switches on when the engine starts. Before that it was a manual switch under the dash, and we flattened the 12V starter battery one time too many.
- A Honda 2000 generator in the back to top the batteries up in the evening when the day's charge isn't enough for a long night.
Sun and battery first, alternator while we roll, generator as the backup. It took us years of iteration to land on that balance.
Bumps in the road (and what we learned)
The playa is as brutal as it is beautiful. Fine alkaline dust gets into everything, the vehicle bounces across miles of rutted lakebed, and we ask our gear to keep the party going for hours on end—often up to 10 hours straight, night after night. Naturally, a few things have tested us along the way! Here are the big learning moments.
The 3kW inverter ran a bit too warm. Our original battery inverter tended to overheat under pressure, so in 2023 we happily upgraded to a 6kW unit. That gave us almost three times the headroom for sound and lights, plus nice, cool operation.
An adventurous inverter output 136V instead of 120V. We ran into a fun puzzle in 2026 when our rear inverter drifted up to 136V. The K12.2s powered on safely but wouldn't play audio, sending us on a bit of a mystery hunt! To keep the music flowing, we plugged them directly into the generator while we worked out the fix: ensuring a rock-solid 120V supply from the rear inverter for future runs.
The K12.2 pole mounts needed a redesign. Early in the week in 2026, the bumps of the lakebed proved to be a bit much for our custom pole mounts, and the cabinet cups cracked under the strain. Our upcoming fix is to take the cups out of the load path entirely: we'll shorten the poles so the speakers rest safely on the horizontal bar with shock-absorbing neoprene, secured with custom tie-downs and yoke mounts.
Even with the cracked mounts, the music didn't stop for a second! We simply brought the K12.2s down and stacked them in pairs on the sides of the car. It was a bit improvisational, but it sounded fantastic and kept everyone dancing.
Giving the monitors some extra TLC. Our DJ booth K10.2s have definitely eaten their share of dust over the years. When the fine playa dust clogs the cooling fans, the amplifiers can thermal-throttle. We've learned a handy field trick—using compressed air on the fans during startup to get them spinning freely—and for future burns, we're planning to build a sealed DJ box and step up to K12.2 monitors.
Weatherproofing the DJ booth. Our trusted DJM-900NXS had a few power-cycling quirks this year from the elements. To keep our setups seamless, we're adding a backup mixer, treating all connections with DeoxIT, and giving our cable runs extra weatherproofing.
None of these little hiccups missed a single sunrise, which is a true testament to our incredible crew! Whether troubleshooting electrical quirks in 2026 or dancing through the rain in 2023, the team always finds a way to keep the energy high and the music playing.
What's next for year ten
Sundowners' decade at the Burn is in 2027 and we want Rexan to sound the best it ever has. The plan is to move one of the subs to a new bracket on the driver's side so there's one on each side of the car, which spreads the bass and gives us a second platform for stacking. We're also designing a line array (QSC L Class: we want 4× LA112 and 2× LS218s if we can raise the money to support it), and we've started talking with the QSC team about how to position and mount it.
2027 concept Work in progress, not final
Overhead, to scale
Side view from the passenger side, to scale · front →
- LA112 ×4, two hung under each K12.2 pair at the bar ends, about 6.9 to 9.5 ft up. 90° horizontal.
- K12.2 ×4 on the top bar, unchanged. Now secondary fill.
- K12.2 monitors on the open windscreen frame.
- LS218 ×1 on end, on the passenger bracket (184 lb). Solid in the side view, on the near side.
- KS118 ×2 stacked on a new driver-side bracket (about 208 lb). Dashed in the side view, on the far side.
- Both sub stacks sit low and between the axles, about 11 to 12 ft apart. Bass sums straight ahead and behind, with a dip around 50 Hz directly off each side.
- LA112 top box, about 3° down: reaches ear height about 55 ft out, over the crowd.
- LA112 bottom box, about 13° down: its lower edge reaches ear height about 2 ft past the hood.
Heights and aims are estimates; cones are illustrative. LA112: 47 lb, 15.4 in tall, 90° × 15°, 136 dB peak. LS218: 184 lb, 141 dB peak.
Thanks
Rexan is built by a big multi-continental crew: welders, fabricators, firmware and electrical people, DJs, drivers and trackers. Without the community of makers and doers this project would be nowhere. It's the community that makes this happen, and it's a community that's been expanding over the past decade, forged and strengthened in the dust, wind and rain.
Thanks also to QSC. Nine years in, and four with your gear, and your boxes are still the ones we trust on the back of a moving safari truck in a dust storm.
See you on the trash fence at sunrise.
— Joshuah Vincent & Greg Liburd