Started my install today...

[GordyNismo]

Well, the car is the garage and I will get started tomorrow. Dynamat first, then what ever I feel needs to come next

 

[GlockandRoll]

I'm sick to my stomach that I had to work today, otherwise I'd be right there.
See you tomorrow.

 

[datant69]

how many ears do people have

come on dude, why are you asking me this question? well there are plenty of taste out there from just wanting to hear WBAP to jamming out to 20 15 inch subs. regardless of how many ears we have the install depends on the consumer. if your happy with 2 speakers then more power to you. it was just an honest question.

 

[$1987 GN$]

IIRC this was done years ago with the same type of setup and it was on the champion list for years. All kinds of trophies for sound level and quality! :biggrin:

I do not recall who's setup it was. There was a complete install with pics on here before the board crash/data loss.

Some other ole fart may recall who it was and chime in. :wink:

I may have some of the pics, I will check later tonight.

The horns were a real pain to install iirc.

Great job . . . nice work on the custom panels and covers etc.

Later AJ

 

[8UWITH6]

IIRC this was done years ago with the same type of setup and it was on the champion list for years. All kinds of trophies for sound level and quality! :biggrin:

I do not recall who's setup it was. There was a complete install with pics on here before the board crash/data loss.

Some other ole fart may recall who it was and chime in. :wink:

I may have some of the pics, I will check later tonight.

The horns were a real pain to install iirc.

Great job . . . nice work on the custom panels and covers etc.

Later AJ

AJ, was it Jim Testa's car? That thing utilized horns as well as some old school Fosgate Power Which Im partial too............

 

[disco stu]

IIRC this was done years ago with the same type of setup and it was on the champion list for years. All kinds of trophies for sound level and quality! :biggrin:

I do not recall who's setup it was. There was a complete install with pics on here before the board crash/data loss.

Some other ole fart may recall who it was and chime in. :wink:

I may have some of the pics, I will check later tonight.

The horns were a real pain to install iirc.

Great job . . . nice work on the custom panels and covers etc.

Later AJ

SpeakerWorks/USD Audio Install Gallery

is that it?

 

[$1987 GN$]

SpeakerWorks/USD Audio Install Gallery

is that it?

Yes sir.

Knew it was speaker something.

Thanks AJ

 

[grocerygetter]

I like seeing high end Regal audio. I'd love to hear some other set ups. I love mine...but its always smart to listen around.

 

[GordyNismo]

The old man is Richard Clark. I believe GlockandRoll got to sit in it and listen to it back in the day

I made good progress today, Dynamated the doors, wired most of the amp and eq/xover and ran the speaker wires for all the speakers. The radio looks really good and the subcontrol now occupies the location of the lighter.

 

[626gn]

I have to agree with Glock. Personally I think rear "sound" muddy's the response and it sounds worse. All I have is Focal 6.5's in the doors, the tweets in the dash, and a sealed box with 2 10's in the trunk. It KILLS most systems that have a bizillion speakers all over the place. It is simple, clean, and loud. I like to listen to my music so I built it for sound quality and not for sharing with the neighborhood. No one ever sits in the rear seat anyway so rear speakers are a waste of time and money. My opinion.

BTW, the install looks great guys. I went a different route and made a fiberglass enclosure for the door speakers which kicked them up slightly towards the listener. They are more on top of the arm rest kick-out than under like seen above. We also made filler panels for the complete lower insert portion of the panel and covered the whole mess with leather. Looks really cool.

Could not agree more. As a general rule of thumb, the less speakers you can get away with the better, providing the speakers you do have are optimally placed and time-aligned. I would venture to say, however, that if your front stage is not positioned and tuned optimally, those systems could benefit from a little rear fill. Just my opinion...

That is one kickass system you're putting together there Glock. Eerily similar to what I'd do with my Buick if I ever grow the balls to cut mine up :biggrin:

 

[GlockandRoll]

Actually, we arent cutting the car up really any. It can all be put back to stock, but I cant imagine ever wanting to. The install will be a stealthy as possible. And Gordy is right, I got the listen to the car at an IASCA show in Dallas just after it won it's like trillionth consecutive world championship. The speakerworks/USD pics stu posted are of the old originall install, when it was owned by Eric Holdaway. Richard bought it and modified it EXTENSIVLY, but still kept the overall theme. It made such a huge impact on me, that I have to admit this install is a bit of a tribute to it, nearly 17 years after I 1st heard the car. The car sounded unreal, and he even went so far as to use a molded human head with an RTA mic imbedded inside the ear canals to time-alling the mids and set the EQ curves. The noise-gates were freaky... not to mention it was LOUD. I mean REALLY loud. Those two 15's after he modified the AP mats to make them active, would probably do 140+ DB.

Another great sounding car was Chad Klodner's Mustang, totally stelth install with Dynaudio components in the kickpanels and a pair of subs in the rear deck.

 

[626gn]

I hear ya. Reading and seeing pics of your tribute install brought me back to the mid 80's - early 90's when I was really into car audio. Best of luck on your install. I would have loved to hear the finished product.

Before Richard purchased the Speakerworks Buick, did you get to hear the system in his Cadillac too?

 

[GlockandRoll]

some music have sounds that come in from the rear or a certain speaker. kinda like surround sound. i'm not saying it won't sound good, it looks like you know what your doing i was just curious as to why no back mounted speakers. tweets and mids have a smaller sound wave and are directional. it may sound better then most but i'm not completely sold on it. To each his or her own, if the consumer is happy with one speaker then it's all you. i was just curious as to why, and i know you don't ride in the back of the car, but if you have back seat passengers it may be harder for them to hear how great it sounds from the back if all the sound is coming from the front. not knocking you as i stated you seem to know what your doing with the customizing of the install. i just never really have gotten good response from using front mount speakers only.

Fair enough, why? I'll tell you why.... it's because you only have two ears. And those ears are about 6" apart, which is roughly the wavelength of a 500hz sound wave. Nothing above 500hz should ever come from behind your sound-stage, except for a car with a DVD-audio 5.1 system that was calibrated for the car, including the reflective surfaces... which is next to impossible, which is why the concept is dead. My TL Type-S had it, and it was only OK at best.

Go to a rock concert, and ask yourself where the rear "sound" is comming from there... it's the reflection. You can time-allign (Delay) the source, but the reflection will always give away it's position... a problem that increases logarithmically with volume.

Now, also go back to the time when you or a buddy had a really kick-ass pair of reference loudspeakers, like some Klipschorns, Von Schwikerts, ADS, or some vintage KEF's... and tell me how many speakers they had; my guess is two!

In large SUV's, I'll put a separate set of components in the rear doors, and angle the tweeters up and towards the center of the roof for the back seat passengers, but in this car, rear sound seems to be a detractor.

Go listen to a world-class IASCA/USAC competitor, and look at the speaker diagram, unless they are running 5.1 DVD audio, you can probably bet they are setting their main sound-stage and image from a pair of components, or horns, and in some rare cases, a center channel...which is not needed in my car.

Your opinion of needing "sound" coming from the back is probably the result of a poor - or more likely non existence - sound-stage w/no proper image for left and right stereo separation.

If we had 4 ears, I'd be putting tweeters in the rear and running some signal processing. But we dont so my goal is to make it sound like Eric Johnson's marshal plexi is about 20 feet in front of the car, a little to the left with bass on the right of the stage, and the drums in the middle.

 

[GlockandRoll]

I hear ya. Reading and seeing pics of your tribute install brought me back to the mid 80's - early 90's when I was really into car audio. Best of luck on your install. I would have loved to hear the finished product.

Before Richard purchased the Speakerworks Buick, did you get to hear the system in his Cadillac too?

Never heard the Caddy, but my old boss Joe did and said it was amazing.

 

[GlockandRoll]

SpeakerWorks/USD Audio Install Gallery

is that it?

John, when you coming back into Austin, I cant wait for you to hear this thing?

We got a lot done today, well I should say Gordy did, he was content with me staying out of the car as he said my 6'3" 235lb frame was 'in his way'..lol... so I basically just handed him what he needed and pulled things from him when he was tearing panels out.

The wiring job is top-notch, and the only thing you will really see is the EQ and sub in the trunk, because the EQ is HUGE... but I have a remote control for it in the center console with my iPod connection.

Tomorrow is putting the head-unit back in, putting the door skins back on, mounting the EQ, and the final challenge is to hang the horns. We should be firing it up - with any luck - and setting gains and cross-overs points tomorrow evening.

 

[GlockandRoll]

We got everything together except for a grill-coth for the waveguides. I'm pooped but managed to sit in the car and play with the gains, crossover points, and eq curves a bit, but when I got it sounding the way I liked, I accidental gripped it and ripped it - much to the wife unit's chagrin - on Dire Straights "So Far Away". That volume knob is like a drug when the car sounds good!

Here are some crappy pics from my blackberry, Gordy has plenty on his shop cam.

 

[GlockandRoll]

The horns are in there sturdy enough to move the car by them.. and the sound is, as I hoped, like a live performance. You cant - really at all - tell where the sound is comming from, and even standing outside the car you can hear left/right speration.

The staging is incredible, and I think I can bring it up higher than dash level with the EQ. The imaging is fantastic, but a little off so I'm going to play with the cross-overs and check to see if one of my mids isnt out of phase.

 

[GordyNismo]

I will try to post some pics this evening.

What I can definitively say is that the front stage in incredible. No matter where your head is at the front stage is omnipresent while maintaining crisp stereo left and right separation. I was also leery about the sub but was surprised and how good it sounded. The OEM deck worked out nicely as well and thanks to the DQL8, I believe it bridged the gap of the yesteryear head unit and the modern-day amplifier. There is also no way we could have gotten the mid bass we did with 5 1/4 mids in the front. The Focal's really have a great ability to grab lower frequencies.

Overall I am impressed. From a complexity standpoint it is a fairly simple system with moderate custom work. The goal was to sound like a a ttue rock concert. I can say it does.


Datant69,

I can say there is no need for rear fill. As I stated earlier, I prefer to have some sound coming through the back of the vehicle but in this case it is truly not needed.

 

[datant69]

i can tell from the brands your using

that this isn't just any ordinary install, i'm sure your getting more then enough mids and tweets with your setup. i didn't know everything that you guys where installing but from the post you guys aren't going the cheap route or using inferior products. personally i've never heard any systems with just front speakers sound good. but that doesn't mean there aren't any that do. glad your install is going well and hope it's everything and more then you expected. wasn't trying to start a fight as i'm not that type i was just questioning the logic of using front speakers. then again as i said i've never heard one like the install your doing and i've heard plenty.

 

[GordyNismo]

Pics as promised. You can also reference the original link that GlockandRoll posted. It has addional pics.