Car Audio. Were/Are you an enthusiast?

Found the 5-1/4s. They look a little rough, but they sounded sweet when I put them away so they will stay.

 

Which model?

 

Car audio was/is a huge addiction for me... confessions of an addict.

I do have a new in the box amp in my closet, hehe.

Been through many major builds/brands. I settled in on the older SoundStream D series amps for their sound quality. My "holy grail" for years was an MC500. 125x4, 250x2 @ 4ohm. Found one near mint with original box. I've used it for decades bridged into 2 Kicker 12's. You think 12's are sloppy, your amp ain't worth peanuts. An MC300 (75x4) powers my front stage with a D100II on rear fill. All speakers have been Kicker, again, for decades. I've beat the living snot out of my subs and they've never skipped a beat. I can make the cartilage in your nose itch. But... to me it's more about quality. I prefer soft dome tweets. Nd25a's came like this:

Amazingly high quality passive crossovers that I never used. I have an Alpine active x-over, Eclipse hu followed by an AudioControl three.2 line driver/preamp/eq

There's a 1 farad cap wired close to the distribution block. I'm sure that's one area technology has passed me by. I think multi farad units are something I should look into some day. I made my sub box/amp rack by molding the spare tire well with fiberglass to utilize the air space.
Past systems included one with 3 Rockford Fosgate Punch 150's and a Punch 45. That one had 2 JL 12's in a bandpass box. It was the best quality bass I've ever had. I loved those subs but one let out on me, so I moved on. They were dual 4 voice coils if I remember right.
Here's a few of my current system as I was putting it together.

 

Here's the closet sitter. These amps sound amazingly great.

 

And my MC300:

I can't find the pitchers of the 500.


Car Audio is alive and well. While I'm not on any related forums, I do belong on a few FB groups for it. Very active groups.
One of the best systems I ever heard was one with 2 Phoenix Gold amps. The M series, one 44 and one 25, connected to Boston Acoustics tweets/mids. Wow, I still remember it and that had to be 90-93ish.

 

Check this out...
Sloppy subs? Getcha some (this should start at about 3:33)




Lol, here I am geeking out on car audio, on a firewood forum!

 

Nice collection! My old roommate had an M44 and M100 in his service truck, loved the sound of those!

I wish I had pics, but the last system I had in my mustang was powered off of one of these.

The Route 66 was an M44 & M25 in the same heat sink. I ran a single 10" in a band pass box, and Boston Acoustics 5.25" components.

 

We have a great bay that we hang out in on the lake. It's shallow and nice and sandy. We've got a group of between 2 and 7 boats that hang out with us, with about 4 to 30 people. So my old correct craft is always the center of attention.

As far as the best sounding sub system I had, was the single 10" Orion sub powered by an Orion amp. I use the enclosure in my boat, but I took the Orion out and run a less expensive JL or is it a kicker? It sounds good, but I am not done with tinkering...

The campus radio I worked at was an alternative station. I worked many shifts, but I was most proud of my industrial music show late at night on Sunday nights. There's some great stuff in both industrial and alternative music. Tool, NIN, ministry, Beastie Boys, etc.

For kicks, play some milli vanilli on a good system. You'll laugh at first. Then you'll hear it. That album was well produced, probably to hide the lip syncing. Lol

 

Ohh, ahhh. Bet that sounded fantastic! I have some pics of my old systems somewhere. They are prints and I'd have to dig deep.

 

That it did! I had a friend doing my system for me. I brought him my pile of stuff to put in the car, and we were working on the layout. We.went back and forth for a few days, then I went over and he said, take a look, I have it all figured out now. Popped the hatch and there was the Route 66 staring back at me. Quickly agreed on a price!

The speakers were actually ADS 335is components. They were a beautiful sounding set.

 

40 plus years ago when cars only had AM radios, one could get an FM tuner to run thru the AM radio. Set the AM radio to a certain freq and tune the FM tuner to the station you wanted to listen to. I think it was an AudioVox tuner. Anyone else remember those units?

 

No, but I remember a match pack under the bottom side of the 8track made head alignment better, vastly improving the sound.

 

This thread has me all nostalgic! I'll have to dig through and find what I have left still. Somewhere in my basement are a pair of Precision Power Art Series amps. An A600, and I think an A200. I had a pile of Linear Power amps, but I sold those off a few years back for far more than I bought them new for. I have a 65 watt amp left somewhere, then the accessories, and newer fancy stuff.

 

I had one of those PPI art series amps, an Ax404. Ran it for a while and never really became a big fan. I remember some guys running them liquid cooled. I still have boxes upon boxes of all the magazines from back then.
My best friend was into the Orion brand. To the discriminating listener, they weren't up to snuff. Way back when he sold his car and got out of it, he gave me his 3 way MBQuart separates. I kept them in a sealed container in hopes to some day make nice wood cabinets and have some bookshelf speakers. Never got around to it.

 

I really should stop reading this thread.


I actually started looking into classic Alpine stereo's on break @ work today.


Wife may wanna kick my a..

 

I have used numerous Soundstream amps in the past, by far the cleanest I could afford.

The boy is using my PP 404 and A300 in his rig now. After installing it I wished I would have put all back in my truck.

I still have partial sheets of .5" and .75" mdf. May have to build another box for myself.

 

All the refrences in this thread have brought back some very fond memories. Jason mentioning bandpass boxes reminded me of on I built with 2 15s. Was built strictly for a db contest. I wish I could remember what subs I used. I know it was on of the larger Soundstream amps.

The box was as large as the rear compartment of my ford probe. The day of the comp it pushed the rear glass out of the weather stripping completely. I didnt even win. Was lots of fun though.

 

Do you remember a number? I bought a dB meter and with that setup(bandpass JL’s) I could just peg it at 125. The rear view mirror would go limp instantly. Never popped any glass though!