Hi all,
Happy New Year…may your 2016 be all you hope for.
I’m don’t think there is a thread for this, if there is…oops sorry…, so I’ll start one for the heck of it.
How did your journey into automobile high fidelity start? When? Can you remember your “first” install? What was it? How did it turn out? How old were you? Etc. etc. etc.
I’m 60 years old and have been an audioholic since I got my first car at 15 back in 1970. It was a ’65 Mercury Marauder two door coupe. I paid $50.00 for it and it ran from day one until I totaled it 6 months later…sigh.
My first install was an FM Converter…mounted under the dash and tied into the AM radio…I had FM woohoo…lots of static and noise if I raised the volume but it was a start and I was hooked.
There was actually a pretty good amount of gear available back then. A lot of it was cheap junk and available at the local department stores…wedge speakers that screwed down on top of the rear deck…ah the bad vibrations and horrible sound lol.
I think my first “head unit” was a Pioneer Super Tuner. It was an under dash, or in the glove box, mount…people were stealing this stuff like no tomorrow as it was very easy to just pull it from the under dash mount so we were trying to hide our stuff where we could…speakers were all paper cone shallow and tinny compared to what was available in the near future but I has a four channel stereo system that rocked.
As I experimented I would add more speakers…LOL by splicing them into the existing wiring going to the main speakers…boy did it degrade the sound quality and power but I had 3 or even four pair of speakers in my car…front door, under rear deck/factory location, on top of the read deck and the door pillars behind the front doors…at head level.
I remember using a cold chisel, hammer, hack saw blades, etc. to “in dash” mount my super tuner by cutting away the steel dash where the stock AM radio fit…I did it but what a butcher job.
I went from Super Tuner to each new model but never adding an amp or sub…didn’t even know what they were at the time. My friends and I were always trying to one up the other and showing off our latest change…but we were also learning.
In the mid ‘70’s I heard about this radio by a brand called “Alpine”. It was an in dash double pole AM/FM radio…just like the old fashioned radio’s…It “boasted” ONE watt of power. My friend an I went to the local stereo shop to listen to it. It was louder and more clear than anything I had ever heard. I left the shop with one and have been buying Alpines ever since…I’ve probably bought and installed over a dozen in my vehicles since then…not a lot perhaps but it is to me as I tried to get as many years out of them as I could…Probably half a dozen were stolen…bastards…the rest were upgrades, etc.
It took some time for other methods of listening to music were available, in my area anyway…Southeast Massachusetts…I had an 8 track player screwed to the floor on the ****** hump with the wiring spliced to the wiring from the radio to the speakers. Always had to have a book of matches or two handy to wedge the 8 track tape cartridge so it wouldn’t drag as the tape wore out or the heads LOL.
Soon came “Cassettes”…This was becoming somewhat of a heyday in the business…there were car and home audio shops popping up everywhere…and going out of business just as quickly…
Radios could be had with built in 8 track players and cassette players were starting to pop up.
Audio quality was improving nearly every day, or so it seemed to me as someone who really knew nothing and was just going on what seemed to work, what I read somewhere or heard from someone at a shop or a friend. I was now learning about the “fidelity” of “stereo” sound and going for quality in one or two pair of speakers rather than how many pairs I could splice and mount everywhere…I once had a van where I had 8 pair of speakers mounted…the radio only had lines for two pair…including a pair of 6x9 in wedges mounted on the ceiling just behind the front captain chairs…LOL..oh my.
I was learning. This was heading into the ‘80’s. I was starting to do very clean installs…pulling the floor carpets, running the wiring in neat rows rather than untidy bird’s nests. I was also starting to move into higher quality front speakers for the main sound stage and the rears for “fill”…still no subs or amps yet.
CD’s became available and the world changed…No more “tape hiss”, no more wearing out the heads, cleaning the heads, trying to adjust the heads to stop dragging…clean, digital sound. Amazing ! ! !
The ‘90’s came along and I got my first amp…it was a small Sony…I still had it and just sold it to a kid last year…it still worked great…it pushed a whopping 20 watts RMS per channel and was a four channel amp…it powered front and rear speakers. Not sure of the speaker brands…probably Pioneer’s, Infinity’s, etc. What was available and in my budget that I thought sounded good.
I started with that Sony amp, moved up to Rockford Fosgate Punch amps…using them for years but replacing the speakers and head units as technology changed and I had money to spend on them. I learned about subs…the reproduction of bass in the car…amazing…I was a poor kid living in a fairly depressed, low income, factory city…we had little money and there was not a lot of information available and not a lot of people, I was aware of anyway, were doing this when I, and my friends, started so we were literally fumbling along and around.
The salesman at the audio shop told me how to “bridge” the rear channels of an amp to provide enough power to power a sub at decent levels…I bought a MB Quart 10” sub and put it in a sealed enclosure at this recommendation. I also started learning about high quality speakers…I had to drive close to Boston MA to this shop but I learned about MB Quart and other speaker manufacturers…got to listen to real high quality in their sound rooms…I could afford very little and had to buy their bottom of the line, or clearance, kit but it was free to listen and dream.
I was buying car stereo magazines and reading about amazing installs…and the cost…Yipes !...
As the computer age appeared I also began to search for other sources of information and what others were doing and how they did it. The computer age opened up so many opportunities.
I’ve continued to try to learn and improve based on my funds. Married, raising two children, owning a home are all costly, leaving few funds for my “hobby”…I’ve always been and always will be a “shade tree” installer…I have left the head unit installs recently to the shop installers as I’ve not kept up with, nor have the time, for today’s complicated installed to keep steering wheel controls, setting controls, etc. I just don’t have the time to tie up my car while trying to sort it all out and doing it correctly. I do install my own amps, speakers, etc. Having the tools, time and knowledge.
Much of the knowledge comes from the internet, especially forums such as this where people share their experience and knowledge via the written word, videos, etc.
Thanks to you all.
I’ve come a long way since my first FM converter and radios/stereos having only Power, ground, and left/right channel speakers…or the mono speaker mounted in the dash LOL. I’ve kept up to what I want for my listening tastes, etc.
Thanks for reading and I hope you add your story to this thread. Common history is important and fun.
Here is a link I found talking about the history of radio in cars. After reading it I realized I was a decade, more or less, behind the times…wow what a backwater I lived in…LOL.
The History of Car Radios - Feature - Car and Driver
