# More than you could afford PAL! :) Ferrari 488 SQ Build - Morel, Gladen, AM, Mosconi



## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

The moment when you find out that you will get to do a full SQ build on a brand new Ferrari 488 GTB is one that begins with much joy and jubilation followed quickly by a phase of uncertainty. Not really because of how expensive or exotic the car as, as when you have been doing things as long as we have, a car, at the end of the day, is a car, and regardless of how pricey it is, they usually end up being all pretty similar...infact, sometimes the more difficult ones are econoboxes 

no, the real issue for this car is that there are virtually no information available to us that we can reference, be it interior removal guidelines, nor more importantly, how the oem signal works. We can only use our experience and research from the 458 Italia, as a rough guide. 

But in the end, we were confident, afterall, we have Joey! From Floridah! who as you can see from this picture, is moar than qualified to work on a ferrari! 










anyway, jokes aside, lets first take a look at this gorgeous vehicle, the changes from the 458, while subtle, is for sure noticeable:




























The car drives and feels completely different though, as it adds a pair of turbos into the mix. the Exhaust the a bit more muted as you would expect, and the turbos and wastegates make themselves known 100 percent. but in the end, the engine bay is still pure maranello 










The goals:

1. achieve a nice level of sound quality 

2. maintain an oem appearance infront of the seats, while adding a bit of flair for the sub enclosure behind the seat

3. maintain a usable frunk 

ironically, weight savings was not part of the requirement from the customer, as this is NOT his track car but more his tourer, as he has other track prepped cars for that purpose. I am sure we can all relate to this right?

lets get started shall we. Joey did virtually all the work on the vehicle, while i simply provided the tuning. 

For signal, as we were unsure of the quality of oem source, we decided that a mosconi AMAS2 HD BT streaming device should be in the mix as a second signal source...as the client mostly listens to music off his phone, and appreciates high quality files with out degredation from the oem amplifier. this of course, means integrating a mosconi DSP controller into the interior.

here first, is a shot of the interior, which when you look at it, is actally not bad for SQ as its relatively wide open, versus the wrap around envelopement found on many newer cars:



















Here you see the mosconi RC-MINI dsp controller, done in a form fitting pod wrapped in real alcantara, located right at fingers touch behind the center console switch gear:



















and here are some quick build pics of the pod holder:

first, the area was tapped off, and joey blended a piece of wood with filler to form the precise fitting shape:










ten this shape was translated to a piece of acrylic: 










then other peices of acrylic were cemented together, included a heated and bent piece, to form the basic shape of the pod:










then filler was applied to smooth out the shape, along with more back filling and test fitting to ensure a precise fitment:





































then the shape was sprayed with adhesive, and wrapped with alcantara...and you can also see the bottom portions of acrylic, which the controller bolts onto, painted black:




























and then the piece was final test fitted into the center console:




























moving onto the rest of the front stage. the car has more traditional locations for the midbass as the lower door, and tweeter as the sails, but the midrange location, located on top of the dash, while not radically different, did involve uh...removing...uh...some parts...of the dash  










then joey fabricated some templates for the midrange, and copied them onto acrylic, and mounting holes drilled and threaded



















these were then painted black and the Gladen Aerospace 3" midranges were bolted in place and wired up, a little bit of modified F.A.S.T foam rings were used to heap seal the speaker aginst the top factory grille:





































and the two midranges were wired up and secured:


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## Lycancatt (Apr 11, 2010)

I can read faster than you can post haha! neat car/gear choices so far.


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## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

moving onto the rest of the front stage, here are two shots of the front door before and after assembly:



















one really really odd thing we found, and helps explain why the stock system sounded so bad, was that there was a layer of NON PERMEABLE cloth behind the factory midbass grills!!  as in, it literally blocks all air moving from it. so obviously, this had to be ground off first, and the grille repainted:




























of course, doing this means that now, the speaker is far more visible behind the grill, along with the ugly plastics surrounding it, so joey cut out a piece of alcantara to match the shape behind the grille, and secured it to the door, and instead of the factory mounting location of the speaker in the door, which, if you will believe, doesnt even line up with the grille and door card opening, joey chose to instead mount the speaker to the door card.



















a pair of F.A.S.T rings were then applied to behind the speaker to form a seal to the door panel cavity itself, while the door card received some sound proofing to help with resonance:










then joey removed the factory weather barrier, and attached a piece of matching sound proofing to it, and then applied a ton of blackhole tiles to the outter door skin to help with resonance and backwaves:




























the Gladen Aerospace midbass was then wired up and installed, along with the newly finished grille, while the our door panel and skin also received some sound proofing in the form of GP STFU composite damper:



















and here you see how the fast ring works to seal the speaker so the backwaves only travel into the door cavity:










the same procedure was then repeated on the passenger side:


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## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

moving onto the tweeter. here is the oem tweeter location after the housing has been removed:










in order to fit the give proper projection to the larger morel MT350 tweeter, the factory grille (thankfully no acoustically non transparent cloth this time) removed, and the holes were enlarged:




























joey then fabricated a new pair of mounting brackets to secure the morel tweeter to the outer grille housing:
































































the completed tweeter housings were then wired up and installed, thus completing the front stage fabrication:



















next comes the signal interface with the oem system...again, since didnt have any information to go on, joey literally had to dig through the car to located the amp, and then once that happened, he and i worked together to sort out exactly which pair of wires from the amplifier corresponded to which speaker...with so many spekaers in the car, this took quite a while...we will take a look at the factory amps signals later in the log, but for now, here are the new signal wires soldered directly to the plug, and then the harness was refinished with TESA cloth tape:


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## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

lets now move to wiring phase of the project. with so many wires neded to go forward, finding a location (or locations) to pass wire from the interior to the frunk was a challenge. first up, was the complete disassembly of the frunk:



















so what joey decided to do, is to utilize a few square factory vent holes (to help relieve air pressure when closing doors) to wires. there were other vent holes on the other side and honestly, it really didnt make any difference aftwards:



















so joey took a piece of wood and traced the opening onto it from those vent holes, and also gave him an idea where to put the mounting holes so the factory studs and moutning washers can be put back in to secure the plate:



















then he translated these pieces into a two part plate made out of abs, three of them in total for all the wiring bundles:



















if you ever wondered how many north floridian you can fit into the frunk of a 488GTB...here is your answer: 










so here are the plates mounted, the wiring bundles, sealed with tesa cloth tape, run through them, and then silicone was applied to weather proof them:














































a factory grounding spot was retained as the grounding point for the system:










and then all the wiring bundles were routed troughout the various places in the frunk, ziptied to factory bundles, and then the main frunk side wall piece was put back in, with all the wiring lead out at the bottom:




























a quick shot of some of the wiring on the interior side, as they pretty much exist from the dash forward:



















here is a quick shot of the battery wiring and fuse holder. it is located in the passenger side foot well and extremely tight. 










the mounting system was relatively simple, after a piece of abs spacer was routered, the fuse holder bolts directly to the battery cover, basically the only place it can go:



















now lets take a look at the finished frunk, as again, the idea is to be stealthy and manitain as much usability as possible. in the normal covered up mode, the frunk presents a pretty stock appearance:



















lift off the top cover plate, and you see a pretty simple floor layout with a profile indented into the boad, and a cutout showing a mosconi Zero 4 4 channel amplifier, outlined by a vinyl ring, against, relatively simple and elegant:


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## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

now lets take a look at what is really going on beneath the floor.

first, joey fabricated a multi angled plate that sits correctly in the frunk floor:










then the center was routered out and a spacer was attached, to both save weight and allow wires to passe through:



















then various spacers were attached, along with magnets to secure the top board, painted black, and then secured to the frunk floor using oem mounting points for the stock frunk floor panel:



















all the signal wires were terminated with new rca ends, while all the speaker wires received ferrules and connects to the euro style barrier strip




























the power and ground wires were then lead to a pair of distribution blocks and wiring for the amps came out the other side:










the system actually consists of TWO mosconi zero 4 amplifiers, with each midbass getting 200 plus watts rms, the midrange and tweeter a little over 100, and the subs getting about a kilowatt, so here is the bottom zero 4 wired up, secured and the spacer board bolted in place:










and then the top zero 4, along with a newly released mosconi 8to12 aerospace dsp was installed, we chose the new aerospace due to its superior ability to work with the AMAS2 for high resolution files without downsampling. not to mention, hey, its a ferrari 488 sq build 



















and then here using a template, joey cut a grove shape into the floor panel as a cosmetic form, and then also fabricated the vinyl ring around the amplifier opening:




























the pieces were then upholstered in carpet and vinyl and mated together:










here is the panel test fitted to the car, joey dug up his florida roots and wanted to put a horse emblem on the board, but i may or may not have vetoed the idea 










so now its time to move to the final piece of the system, and the most decorative and labor intensive: the sub enclosure. 

very early on, the decision was made to do an enclosure that had some showiness to it but yet flowed with the design of the car. it can be showy as most of it will be obsecured by the seats when in normal riding position, so here is that shot:



















pull the seats all the way forward though, and the entire subbox greates you with all its glory.

three audiomobile EVO2408 8" subs reside in an enclosure of about 1.25 cubic foot. the top and bottom portions of hte box is trimmed in factory matching vinyl, while the area around the subs have a two tone look, with real carbon fiber accents on top, and factory matching tan vinyl on the bottom, the seam is broken up with a red line, which is actually the edge of a painted piece of aluminum. an acrylic bar drops down from the top of the box to act as a grille but more a cosmetic finisher for the c enter sub, whcih is exposed with the seats back...the sub also sits in its own tan vinyl trim plate, to go with the finish on the seats...i think picstures will do way more justice to this enclosure than my words:


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## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

so lets take a look at how joey made this masterpiece.

first order was to figure out a mounting system for the enclosure, so joey removed panels both in the interior and the engine bay, to find some solid mounting points through the firewall:




























a plate and a sub was test fitted to figure out the proper angle and dimensions of the subbox:, and the two final mounting points were chosen:




























joey then sketched up a few designs for the enclosure, and went to town 










first, he created a backplate that fits over the oem mounting points on the firewall, and secured a piece of aluminum plate to it, this central mount will act as the main mounting point for the enclosure:





































then the rest of the back side of the enclosure was fabricated and test fitted to the car:



















then the front panel was fabricated, with all its integrated pieces, including the pieceof aluminum that serves as the line break. as you can see, this invovled many many pieces coming together, molded into what finally becomes a single front fascia:






















































































































once the finished front fascia was bonded to the back half of the box, a palm router was used to ensure a smooth fitment:










and here you have a assembled enclosure before upholstery and trim:




























then the box was upholstered, with the areas where the trim panels attached left bare:










here you see the gap left for the painted aluminum red line, and here you those pieces being painted both outside and then once they are attached to the box:




























joey once again flexed his creative juices and wanted to put a horse emblem on the box to accent it, and once against, i may or may not have vetoed the idea 










next, the carbon pieces were routered from the mdf templates, and the other trim pieces were wrapped in tan vinyl, and both secured to the box:



















and the audiomobile subs were wired up:


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## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

the back area was taped and protected to prep for final installation, and joey used a cool little molex plug to serve as a quick disconnect for the box wiring:



















here is the entire box upholstered and ready to go, with the four threaded inserts on top, which will secure the grille bar, left bare. while the backside of the center sub trim panel received some foam to help against any type of panel on panel buzzing:




























and finally, it was time to fabricate the acrylic grille/bar. 

it starts with a bunch of acrylic bars, routered to the desired shape, and bolted together:
































































then the piece went through several layers of high build primer and fine sanding to achieve a perfectly smooth finish:



















and then it was painted a matt dark gray/silver to match the interior trim pieces and bolted to the enclosure:




























so, thus completes the build portion of the log.

l


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## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

lets focus on how the thing sounds and the oem signal analysis 

so after going through literally every single set of output wires from the oem amp, here is what we found.

first, here is the front woofer/low signal, unprocessed, and tested at various volume settings:



















here is the same analysis on the front midrange signal (forgot to take a snap shot of the volume eq)










and here is the tweeter channels:



















and here is a funny thing, the car has no rear speakers, but it has powered rear channels...so, here is a shot of the rear channel as well...not sure what kind of speaker would work with this type of signal:



















thus, here is the unprocessed signal of all the front channels summed together through the mosconi 8to12 aerospace:










it isnt terrible to be honest, but the big thing you have to notice is the big drop off of the subbass frequencies.

after some playing wtih the intput eq on the mosconi, i was able to get this signal out of it:










and what it looks like at various volume settings, again, it has some dynamic eq, but it too terrible:










to be honest, this car sounded better than i expected.

the overall tonality is very smooth and VERY airy, it really does a good job of vonveying a sense of space to a pretty small interior. 

the stock headunit sounded decent, but the amas2 was for sure superior...especially noticeable on the lower frequencies and subbass, but overall it was wider and more precise.

the midbass impact out of the gladens, as usual, are superb, a lot of extension and impact with no hint of distortion, the midrange and highs, after some tuning, were smooth but detailed. 

the car had a decent center and very good height, but with the oddbass locations of the tweeters (pretty far back in the door) and the midrange (very far inboard, centered above the instrument cluster on the driver side and a matching distance about a foot away from the passenger side pillar), width and depth can vary a little depending on songs. but overall, it is pretty decent. 

I think joey did a great job on this beast, despite his penchant for horse emblems  and it was nice to know that these new Ferraris can be made to sound very nice.

as a final gesture, i leave you with that memorable scene that gave birth to the title of this build log:

https://youtu.be/J4b4QoXEhtA

Cheers,

Bing


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## JayinMI (Oct 18, 2008)

simplicityinsound said:


> joey then sketched up a few designs for the enclosure, and went to town


Hmmm...I bet the customer is glad he didn't go with the design in the upper left corner. lol

Awesome work. 

Jay


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## beerdrnkr (Apr 18, 2007)

I wonder if some point-source mids would have been a better option? Either way, awesome install and awesome vehicle!!!!


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## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

beerdrnkr said:


> I wonder if some point-source mids would have been a better option? Either way, awesome install and awesome vehicle!!!!


I thought about it... But likely would have made the stage two feet wide as the stock mid locations are about a foot inboard from the pillars as mentioned.  

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk


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## beerdrnkr (Apr 18, 2007)

simplicityinsound said:


> I thought about it... But likely would have made the stage two feet wide as the stock mid locations are about a foot inboard from the pillars as mentioned.
> 
> Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using Tapatalk


Ahhh makes sense. 

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk


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## Isaac.Troseth (Jul 18, 2015)

JayinMI said:


> Hmmm...I bet the customer is glad he didn't go with the design in the upper left corner. lol
> 
> Awesome work.
> 
> Jay


First thing that crossed my mind, ha!! 

That was a super interesting build log, great work there Joey.


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## cmusic (Nov 16, 2006)

I wonder what your business insurance would have said if you had screwed something up in this Ferrari? 

Back in the mid '90s a local shop's installer screwed an amp rack into the behind-the-seat fuel tank in a 3 week old Mercedes S-Class. The trunk liner carpets, rear seat, interior carpet, and fuel tank had to be replaced and the owner required a new S-Class as a loaner car until his was fixed by a Mercedes dealership. The shop's insurance paid out on the damage and ironically the installer was not fired. 

Anyway, awesome install on an awesome car!


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## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

cmusic said:


> I wonder what your business insurance would have said if you had screwed something up in this Ferrari?
> 
> Back in the mid '90s a local shop's installer screwed an amp rack into the behind-the-seat fuel tank in a 3 week old Mercedes S-Class. The trunk liner carpets, rear seat, interior carpet, and fuel tank had to be replaced and the owner required a new S-Class as a loaner car until his was fixed by a Mercedes dealership. The shop's insurance paid out on the damage and ironically the installer was not fired.
> 
> Anyway, awesome install on an awesome car!



i think thats always on the back of my mind when we get in something expensive, but i do believe mistakes like drilling through a gas tank is one born out of carelessless...or impatience, where someone at some point just said, well i dont see whats back there, i am going to go for it.

id like to think that on a car like this, or any car, its not something we should be doing  and try, as in this case, to use all oem mounting points


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## northendguy (Dec 19, 2015)

wow impressive build !! the only thing i was wondering was that the amplifiers are in such a confined compartment wouldn't they get too hot if you turned up the system for an extended listen like on a road trip or do they stay pretty cool? just wondering


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## ageggatt24 (Aug 17, 2012)

Amazing Job!


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## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

northendguy said:


> wow impressive build !! the only thing i was wondering was that the amplifiers are in such a confined compartment wouldn't they get too hot if you turned up the system for an extended listen like on a road trip or do they stay pretty cool? just wondering


thermal efficiency is kind of the ever constant trade off in a fake floor hidden install. there is no doubt that if you blast an amp at very high volumes and high bass content, a hidden covered up install with produce a lot more thermal build up than an amp in the open, but with the vented covers, and amps we choose that are pretty good at thermal efficiency, it isnt a big issue.

for example, this car was actually DRIVEN back to socal, a good 6 hour drive, with no issues all covered up 

b


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## a114m4 (Sep 27, 2012)

always love your build logs

(can't post links yet since i've posted only twice)

the picture right before the picture of the wires with ferrules...is that metal thing a rotary tool or a battery powered soldering iron?


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## JayinMI (Oct 18, 2008)

Looks like one of these:

https://fastsolder.com/

Jay


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## speakerpimp (Feb 15, 2012)

Always some next level **** out of y'all! Incredible!!


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## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

yup jay got it


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## bassfreak85 (Jul 26, 2009)

some of the best work I've every seen. pure bliss. making a Ferrari sound good isn't easy. its a purpose built car for sure!


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## Dan750iL (Jan 16, 2016)

I could afford that. But then I wake up. 

Awesome work!!!


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## optimaprime (Aug 16, 2007)

That sub box is freaking aweosme ! Those subs will pound your ass off and then blend away to where you never know they where there. Maybe not in that car since so close but man they are nice subs.


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## simplicityinsound (Feb 2, 2007)

optimaprime said:


> That sub box is freaking aweosme ! Those subs will pound your ass off and then blend away to where you never know they where there. Maybe not in that car since so close but man they are nice subs.


blending on this car, surprisingly wasnt much of an issue. prolly more to do with joeys box being solid and well anchored than anything, but i was thinking id be able to localize it, but i couldnt. and i do think the solid CF seat backs help a bit with loading too compared to some other cars we have done with this kind of config and cloth or leather seats


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## Randyman... (Oct 7, 2012)

speakerpimp said:


> Always some next level **** out of y'all! Incredible!!


Apologies for posting here, but I'm looking to get in touch with SpeakerPimp and can't track him down. Anyone know where he's working these days? He hasn't been online here since the quoted post almost a year ago 

Back to that awesome Ferrari! :coolgleamA:


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## juiceweazel (Jul 28, 2014)

Amazing work here. I'm sure the butt pucker factor was high on this one.
I always look forward to your build logs because you take the time to document & explain everything. Thank you for that.


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