# Did brands like Pyramid ever make anything good?



## impulse

Looking at some old school pics. Like this stuff from Pyramid audio, it looks high end anyway, were all their products always junk? If so how do some of these long time brands stay alive today? I mean there must be a healthy market for it somewhere, I've never seen them in my area since the early 90's at least.

I have to admit, I like the look of these, really interesting and unique imo, seems if they made these again today with a little honest marketing, they could probably sell well


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## Onyx1136

No, the products in those pics are the exact opposite of "high end."


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## Jheitt142

They have such neat looking old school stuff, same with LAnzar. 

Junk or not every week I fight to not buy this 

Look at this on eBay http://www.ebay.com/itm/390929064869


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## I'm not new

To me personally, those products look cheap. They did have a series of Super Pro amps that were built by Precision Power for a couple of years. Nice understated white amps with a super pro logo screen printed on top. 

Another series of amps were manufactured by Zed Audio. They didn't do rated max power but were pretty well made amps. I think Stephen Mantz stated they did about half of the rated power.

They also had super pro and super blue series of woofers that for a while were manufactured by Eminence. I can't speak for the quality but those would be the models I would look for by them.

Of course as a teen I owned several of the Phase III Tenna paper cone woofers. Never really used them in a car though. Just stuff I played around with as a teen while dipping my toes into the audio world.


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## Elgrosso

They have probably one of the best cheap woofer: Pyramid W64 6-1/2" Pro Plus Midbass Woofer
They worked really well for me as OEM replacement


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## GEM592

"Royal Red" lol


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## High Resolution Audio

Onyx1136 said:


> No, the products in those pics are the exact opposite of "high end."


Yes they did have a line of high end gear. 

They had a like of amps called the Pyramid Super Pro which were actually PPI based amps. 

I still own one to this day. 

http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum...ssion/141570-old-school-pyramid-made-ppi.html


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## beerdrnkr

I remember the power acoustic fire and ice series was pretty good. It was an amp I wanted badly back in the day.

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## Jheitt142

Elgrosso said:


> They have probably one of the best cheap woofer: Pyramid W64 6-1/2" Pro Plus Midbass Woofer
> They worked really well for me as OEM replacement


Those are the ones I struggle not to buy. They're available on eBay for $100cdn shipped for 4! 

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## HardCoreDore

IMHO, equipment that looks "flashy" like that is nothing but junk. They are pandering to 15-17 year olds who don't know any better. I do agree with those who have mentioned Pyramid's SuperPro Line from the Mid 90's.They were great amps! Those are the only Pyramids I can vouch for though. The Zed line that Mantz made was a "Boss" branded line of amplifiers, not Pyramid. I suppose he could have made some for Pyramid that I'm not aware of though... 

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## I'm not new

I may have mixed them up.


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## Bayboy

There was some Pyramid gear that was ok. Having played with a few of their subs, they were quite impressive for what they were. I've used those Super Pro 6.5" mids a long time ago. Ran them in the doors on a Punch 150 and they took it like a champ. Back then (90's) Super Pro subs were black with red surrounds, some even pro audio style. High end? Of course not, but that was a long time ago. Barely any subs worked in small boxes. There's a difference between "high end" and simply being useful.


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## Onyx1136

High Resolution Audio said:


> Yes they did have a line of high end gear.
> 
> They had a like of amps called the Pyramid Super Pro which were actually PPI based amps.
> 
> I still own one to this day.
> 
> http://www.diymobileaudio.com/forum...ssion/141570-old-school-pyramid-made-ppi.html


It would appear that you failed reading comprehension in grade school. I didn't say anything about the brand as a whole. He refered to the pictures as looking high end, and I commented on the equipment in the pictures, nothing more. Read a little bit slower, pay a little more attention, and don't put words in my mouth. If your tin foil hat is causing you difficulties when you read, perhaps consider adjusting it.


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## juiceweazel

street.terror said:


> They have such neat looking old school stuff, same with LAnzar.
> 
> Junk or not every week I fight to not buy this
> 
> Look at this on eBay 4) Pyramid W64 6.5" 800 Watt Car Audio Midrange/Mid Bass Poly Woofers Speakers 68888701631 | eBay
> 
> 
> Sent from my SM-G930W8 using Tapatalk


"Enjoy superior quality bass along with warm and textured mids with the Pyramid W64 one-way car speaker that delivers 200 watts peak power.

"With a frequency response range of 60 Hz to 5 kHz, this one-way car speaker captures a wide range of signals to provide for an optimal performance."

Because we know the speaker DELIVERS the power & subs sound best playing up to 5kHz :laugh:


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## Bayboy

juiceweazel said:


> "Enjoy superior quality bass along with warm and textured mids with the Pyramid W64 one-way car speaker that delivers 200 watts peak power.
> 
> "With a frequency response range of 60 Hz to 5 kHz, this one-way car speaker captures a wide range of signals to provide for an optimal performance."
> 
> Because we know the speaker DELIVERS the power & subs sound best playing up to 5kHz


Marketing aside, have you used them?


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## juiceweazel

Bayboy said:


> Marketing aside, have you used them?


Yes I tried a few amps & subs back in the day. They worked in a pinch when I needed something to get me by while I saved for better gear. By saying worked I mean they made sound. I'll agree they fill a niche but I always laughed at their claims.


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## Hillbilly SQ

All jokes and hate aside sometimes it's just plain fun to play around with carefully selected super budget equipment. Take your blinders off and check your snobbery at the door and you just might like what you hear if your expectations aren't set very high and accept the piece of equipment for what it is. I have a little sh!ts n giggles project planned involving $120 in 4 8's in 4 cu ft tuned to 35hz. Said 8's are known overachievers and bet I have $500 worth of fun with less than $200 in the whole project.


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## Bayboy

The unfortunate thing about back then, not many that bought such gear really knew what they were doing, or had capable testing tools. You just hooked up amps, put the subs in an arbitrarily sized box, and voila! Of course it didn't help that most low end manufacturers didn't give proper data, that's if they gave any at all. By the time knowledge & tools advanced, so did that particular consumer's choice in gear. 

There was one Pyramid or Legacy sub that was rather pretty damn good. Yellow woven kevlar cone, santoprene surrounds, decent motor structure, and worked in pretty small sealed boxes. Wasn't a street boomer, but played pretty clean and extended pretty deep. From my experiences alone, I've learned not to judge gear by looks or cost. Rather investigate and test if possible. You never know what you might run across.


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## DC/Hertz

Sometime what we think we remember was not as good as we remember it. 

As for taking the blinders of. There is a difference between budget and junk.


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## Bayboy

Sigh


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## juiceweazel

Hillbilly SQ said:


> All jokes and hate aside sometimes it's just plain fun to play around with carefully selected super budget equipment.


This I will agree with. It was fun to see how far you could push the equipment. And yes part of the budget equipment problem is people not knowing what they were doing. I'll admit, when I first started I blew a few cheapo's due to lack of knowledge. But I bought them knowing I really didn't know. And I bought the cheapo equipment again later on to get by.



Bayboy said:


> There was one Pyramid or Legacy sub that was rather pretty damn good.


I never had a problem with Legacy amps. I had pretty good luck with them and Power Acoustik actually.


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## Bayboy

As long as you know the gear's limits you can get by or do pretty good, but there's a diminishing return on that as well. At some point, you have to use the best that your money can buy regardless of what brand it is and that includes output & durability. Certain Jensen amps did that for me until I decided to upgrade. One particular was the KA-5 (I think that's correct). 5 channel A/B amp on a set of JBL speakers & two Dayton Thruster 10". Wasn't powerful, but at decent volumes was clean. 

I don't miss those days, but I respect what was had from very little.


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## Hillbilly SQ

DC/Hertz said:


> Sometime what we think we remember was not as good as we remember it.
> 
> As for taking the blinders of. There is a difference between budget and junk.


I know I'd throw up if I heard today what I thought sounded great back then. My old posts on this forum show the ugly truth about how ignorant I was back then.

I like to keep "cheap" and "inexpensive" separate. "Inexpensive" should be used for stuff that has a lot of bang for the buck. "Cheap" should be reserved for stuff that's just plain junk. You can get a raw driver with a pretty good motor on an unflashy cone for under $100. Then there are tons of car audio brands that offer stuff for about the same price that are just plain cheap junk. It's all about knowing if what you're buying carries value with the price tag whether it be $10 or $1000 and beyond. If a $100 speaker is a better design that a $1000 esoteric speaker you better believe I'll buy the $100 speaker because it's a smarter purchase. Tons of gray area here so just using a random example. Same with amps. If I'm looking at two different amps and the less expensive one does what I need it to with the same or better quality parts in it the less expensive amp is the better buy. More money doesn't always mean better quality.


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## Bayboy

Couple that with today's advantage of utilizing a dsp to optimize whatever you use. Back then, most didn't have that advantage so I think giving a bit of credit for what was accomplished during that time is due.


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## misterjones

Back in 1990, the car audio shop I worked at had one cardinal rule: "We ain't installin no Pyramid EXCEPT their subwoofers."

I've heard a lot of custom built enclosures tailored to old-school Pyramid woofers that sounded *phenomenal*. One of my installers loved 'em so much that when he quit and opened his own shop he specialized in Pyramid woofers.

Oh, there was a 4 or 6 channel amp that Pyramid made back then. HUGE thing with handles on both ends. Think old school Hifonics Colossus but black. My installers swore by that thing. We were a huge Kenwood shop back then and the 1020/1021 was our gold standard for big assed amps and the installers still not-so-secretly fawned over that ONE Pyramid amp. It was fairly expensive, even in JC Whitney catalogs where everything was cheap.

Right now, I'm debating on a commuter car and if I pick up an old Accord or 2nd/3rd gen Prelude I'm dropping a pair of these Pyramid 8" joints in there. I've already ran 'em through Blaubox and I'm utterly amazed at what I can pull out of 'em.


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## High Resolution Audio

Onyx1136 said:


> It would appear that you failed reading comprehension in grade school. I didn't say anything about the brand as a whole. He refered to the pictures as looking high end, and I commented on the equipment in the pictures, nothing more. Read a little bit slower, pay a little more attention, and don't put words in my mouth. If your tin foil hat is causing you difficulties when you read, perhaps consider adjusting it.



You don't have to be a DICK about it. And learn how to spell referred.


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## impulse

If nothing else, the board shown through the plexiglass in OP looks very nicely arranged and thought out.
Maybe the gold sub looks cheap to some but I can't help but think how sexy it looks...could do without the crown but I just love how the back of the sub looks.

I just can't believe Pyramid is still around.


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## BeefShadow

The old "Profile by California" amps were awesome. I believe these had the same internals as Pyramid amps, but came in a white case with a red led bar in the middle. They looked cool, remained cool under pressure, and are still one of my favorite amps


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## PPI_GUY

Back in the day Pyle actually had some decent gear. Today, not so much. 
However, there is one piece of Pyle equipment that caught my eye a few years ago. It's my guilty obsession. I think it's discontinued now but, it has tiffany-style RCA's, 100 amps of fusing and well, I'll just let the photos speak for themselves....

https://www.sonicelectronix.com/pictures_new.php?id=68832&picture_id=-1

Details...

https://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_68832_Pyle-PLA4988.html

2 channel version...

https://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_68831_Pyle-PLA2988.html


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## Jheitt142

People on PE seem to love the cheap Pyle 6.5s 

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## stickpony

beerdrnkr said:


> I remember the power acoustic fire and ice series was pretty good. It was an amp I wanted badly back in the day.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G930T using Tapatalk




Power acoustik had some great Amps over the years:

The sapphire series
The majestic series
The 1ohm high current series
The Farenheit series

I haven't tried the current lineup, but thy really did have some great stuff over the years



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## Bayboy

What's funny is people bag on some low tier brand from back then, but also overlook at what was fairly average from past higher brands as well. It's so easy to toot your nose up when you are living in the current world of electronics where big power is cheap and advanced drivers are widely available, but half of these same people wouldn't be able to put together a system worth a squat if they existed back then without the knowledge recently acquired from being on here and a few other places. Now all of a sudden... everything under a certain price or whatever is crap.


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## PPI_GUY

Bayboy said:


> What's funny is people bag on some low tier brand from back then, but also overlook at what was fairly average from past higher brands as well. It's so easy to toot your nose up when you are living in the current world of electronics where big power is cheap and advanced drivers are widely available, but half of these same people wouldn't be able to put together a system worth a squat if they existed back then without the knowledge recently acquired from being on here and a few other places. Now all of a sudden... everything under a certain price or whatever is crap.


And don't forget that most every manufacturer, even back in the day, offered so-called entry level gear. They'd have been crazy not to! 
But, some of the name brand entry level gear was pretty weak too. It isn't just something that has popped up recently.
The elephant in the room is that just because something was made in the USA doesn't automatically mean it is/was better.


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## Bayboy

At times I wonder what things would have been like back in the 90's & so forth had DSP been widely available & affordable. Heck, even deadening materials & techniques. It's amazing of the differences and improvements made when the listening environment is treated properly enabling you to maximize modest gear. I'm not talking about compensating for crap drivers and amps that are no better than a headunit, so don't go there. Just pointing out that we worked with what was available and respected it even on the lower levels more than most do now. 

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## misterjones

PPI_GUY said:


> And don't forget that most every manufacturer, even back in the day, offered so-called entry level gear. They'd have been crazy not to!
> But, some of the name brand entry level gear was pretty weak too. It isn't just something that has popped up recently.
> The elephant in the room is that just because something was made in the USA doesn't automatically mean it is/was better.


Old thread, but I didn't see this reply.

I came from the era BEFORE Rockford Series1, Orion Cobalt, PPI Sedona, etc when NOBODY offered "entry level" gear. There was the "good" stuff like Rockford Punch amps, Orion, PPI, Hifonics, Phoenix Gold, SoundStream and the like. There was the "big ass manufacturer" tier from Pioneer, Kenwood, Sony, Alpine, Clarion, and what have you, there was the "I should probably save some money to get better stuff but this will do for now" tier which is where Sherwood, Jensen, Phase Linear, etc lived, and THEN there was the "**** tier", home of ******** like Pyramid, Boss, Rockwood, Kenford, and other flea-market crap. 

There weren't many options if your budget wasn't great. You could always go for the Jensen or Sherwood stuff, and a lot of guys ran it without an issue, you just had to understand that while the amps were fairly solid, they didn't produce anything close to whatever it said on the box except in a lab at pure distortion. As long as you understood that, you could reasonably enjoy your purchase. "**** tier" stuff had what we called "ILS" power ratings: If Lightning Strikes. A lot of it was just comical. I can't remember if it was Pyramid or Boss, but one of them sold a series of amps with a layer of lead on the bottom plate to make it weigh more; just to make it feel like a good amp. A buddy of mine bought this gigantic red amp, either Boss or Rockwood, and asked me to install it. something was wrong with it and when I took it apart to have a look at it there was a small circuit board at one end of the amp with a long run of wires to the other side.

When Rockford led the charge with Series 1, it was a godsend for us in the battle of the ******** amplifiers. I LIVED by Series 1 stuff and it worked out really, really well. I could usually talk a guy into a Series 1 260SD that was about to buy a piece of flea-market junk and it definitely helped that my car was running a pair of 230SD's and a 260SD on the sub. Just walk 'em out to my car, let them check it out, then walk 'em back in and fill out the purchase ticket. Series 1 et al filled in a very much needed slot for us; cheap amp made by a reputable company. Series 1 was so good that even Kenwood started selling stuff in that range with their 624, 644, 744, and the very awesome KAC-714 mono sub amp.


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## Buickmike

The comment about lead plates makes me laugh so hard because I was the victim of that around 1990 - 1991. I was 16 and wanted to get an amp for my first car and the electronics convention was in town. I thought that I could outsmart the scammers with the flea market crap by checking the amps for weight. So I walked down this table lifting all the Rockwood, Kenford, Unic, and all the other junk amps looking for the heavy ones. Then I found it! A 4 channel, 300 watt Mobile Authority amp! I was excited. Not sure how much it was, but it was cheap and I bought it. I took it home and powered it up to a run a couple house speakers. To my dismay, it sounded like a clock radio. I tinkered around and finally decided to take the bottom plate off. That's when I found the lead plate glued to the bottom and a circuit board that was about 2" x 4" in this fairly large amp. My buddies were laughing their asses off at me! I was pretty upset, but it was funny. That summer I bought a Hifonics Cupid VII for $100 from a pawn shop. Now THAT was a good amp. I beat that amp hard and it never failed. Ran it at 1/2 the resistance it was rated at and at one point had it in tri mode with 2 10" subs and 4 6.5's. 

My buddy had a big ass Pyramid Gold amp that had VU meters on it. It ran his Crunch 15" Pro sub hard for all of 5 minutes before going up in smoke lol. I never considered Pyramid after that.


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## Big dick daddy

Onyx1136 said:


> It would appear that you failed reading comprehension in grade school. I didn't say anything about the brand as a whole. He refered to the pictures as looking high end, and I commented on the equipment in the pictures, nothing more. Read a little bit slower, pay a little more attention, and don't put words in my mouth. If your tin foil hat is causing you difficulties when you read, perhaps consider adjusting it.


Dude don't b a dick!!# that's what I think too.yes thay have good **** just don't over power it dammm


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## JimmyDee

Big dick daddy said:


> Dude don't b a dick!!# that's what I think too.yes thay have good **** just don't over power it dammm


Really?
You took the time to open an account, just to respond to a 3 year old thread...?


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## sqshoestring

misterjones said:


> Back in 1990, the car audio shop I worked at had one cardinal rule: "We ain't installin no Pyramid EXCEPT their subwoofers."
> 
> I've heard a lot of custom built enclosures tailored to old-school Pyramid woofers that sounded *phenomenal*. One of my installers loved 'em so much that when he quit and opened his own shop he specialized in Pyramid woofers.
> 
> Oh, there was a 4 or 6 channel amp that Pyramid made back then. HUGE thing with handles on both ends. Think old school Hifonics Colossus but black. My installers swore by that thing. We were a huge Kenwood shop back then and the 1020/1021 was our gold standard for big assed amps and the installers still not-so-secretly fawned over that ONE Pyramid amp. It was fairly expensive, even in JC Whitney catalogs where everything was cheap.
> 
> Right now, I'm debating on a commuter car and if I pick up an old Accord or 2nd/3rd gen Prelude I'm dropping a pair of these Pyramid 8" joints in there. I've already ran 'em through Blaubox and I'm utterly amazed at what I can pull out of 'em.


LOL in the late 80s I worked at an auto place that could order stuff wholesale for employees. I was buying pyramid 10s the old paper ones by the dozen for $8 each or something. Tho back then $10 bought you stuff. We would run them quad IB or in 2cf each boxes, after a couple years they would fail, but sound and performance was very good at the time on a 300w amp. They were not as HD as the pyles then but so much cheaper. I was selling them to friends lol. The pyle 15s I was running IB a few years ago were similar heavy paper build, but now they stopped making them.


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## DemocratsStink

Ok, Low end but they made several brands of car equalizers/amplifiers that are in very high demand today. Some selling upwards of $200.00 on ebay. I will purchase them if the prices is right and have I purchased several in the past because the provided a little extra power boost, they look cool, and were easy to wire, but mostly they pretty cool. Like I said, I still have several working equalizer boosters today and they do just fine so. Low end, yes, Useful yes, reliable, Yes. 

It really depends what you want to do with your car stereo.


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## droberson000

HAD THE PUPRLE 800X4 BRIDGED ON TWO SERIES1 15'' AND TWO PUNCH 15'' IN THE BACK OF A BEETLE IN THE 90'S. NOT SAYING IT FED THEM FULL BUT FOLKS HEARD ME COMING FOR QUITE A WHILE BEFORE I ARRIVED. CANT GO WRONG IF YOU BOMMING ON A BUDGET.. THEY WOULD POP OUT THE BACK LATCHED WINDOWS OUT AT 35HZ/.LOL


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## Sounds_Insane

Jheitt142 said:


> They have such neat looking old school stuff, same with LAnzar.


Lanzar used to have some good amps back in the day. The original Opti amps were impressive.


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## S.C. Robert1999

impulse said:


> Looking at some old school pics. Like this stuff from Pyramid audio, it looks high end anyway, were all their products always junk? If so how do some of these long time brands stay alive today? I mean there must be a healthy market for it somewhere, I've never seen them in my area since the early 90's at least.
> 
> I have to admit, I like the look of these, really interesting and unique imo, seems if they made these again today with a little honest marketing, they could probably sell well


My first speaker box in the 80's was a pyramid with 4-10", it was a behind the seat pickup truck unit. Paid $150 from a pawn shop. The box was to tight so i took the tweeters out to make base ports. Also after reading CAR STEREO REVIEW I wired the 4ohm 10's in parallel down to 1.9 ohms and rocked it with a Majestic 300HD bridged. It would play fine until the thermal protection would kick in from to hot. Kinda cool for a kid in high school in 1988.


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## chuyler1

Knock those budget brands all you want but they knew how to advertise and many survived the brandpocalypse. You can still buy Pyramid subwoofers (for $11 on PE) and Boss some how has a full lineup of gear on Crutchfield.


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## Jason in KC

After my 80w Jensen, I upgraded to a120w LA Sound Malibu, then stepped up to a big dog "2000w" Precision Audio something-or-other amp that ROCKED a couple of Lanzar 12s. I thought I was the **** for about 3 days till it all got stolen.


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## Sounds_Insane

chuyler1 said:


> Knock those budget brands all you want but they knew how to advertise and many survived the brandpocalypse. You can still buy Pyramid subwoofers (for $11 on PE) and Boss some how has a full lineup of gear on Crutchfield.


If Pyramid still sold the clear cone Phase III subs I'd pick up a pair of 12's for nostalgia sake. When my cousin moved back up from Florida he talked about them. We went to the flea market and I bought a pair and built the old school box with the horn tweeter and random size port. First subs I bought and box I built, and I didn't even have a car yet.

I'd rebuild that box and just use it in my office or in the garage

some pop up on ebay every once in a while:








Pyramid Phase III tenna woofer 12 inch. | eBay


Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Pyramid Phase III tenna woofer 12 inch. at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!



www.ebay.com


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