# 1971 Pinto Stereo Upgrade



## MythosDreamLab (Nov 28, 2020)

_(Please hold any laughter and snide remarks until the end...thank you) _

Back around 1975, my first car was a 71 Pinto Hatchback, and since I was super into music, I wanted to upgrade the stereo, but being a HS kid making less than $200 a month, I had to get creative...

So, I went with what I believe was one of the first reasonably priced separate HU/Amp unites ever made. I still have the original Westport brochure (shown below).










So I had this killer cassette deck and separate amp, but could not run speakers in my rear deck (as my hatchback did not have one..lol). The rear seats had a recessed area, sort a molded pocket that I used as an enclosure, I got some plastic larger than the opening and mounted Philips Tweeters and Mids in it along with some 8" Radio Shack Woofers and Radio Shack 3-way crossovers, ported it (don't ask me why..lol), stuffed the entire area with some sort of filler/foam and sealed it up with some screws with black plastic cscrew-cap-covers.










Now I know, it totally goes against the front & rear sound stages of today, but I'm telling you, it sounded pretty awesome and got SUPER LOUD even with the full 18wpc...!

Even had a friends neighbor call the cops on me when we were blasting it in his driveway one day (Anyone want to hear what happened? It's a cool story as well)

Anyway that was my very first trip into the realm of car high fidelity..

Oh, and believe Westport eventually became or was bought out by Concord....


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## DaveG (Jul 24, 2019)

Great story! My mom had a 73/74 red pinto station wagon with the fake wood stickers on the side! It was our first car with factory am/fm! I remember Concord too. Seems like it was high end if my memory is correct. I'd love to hear about the cops showing up.


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## seafish (Aug 1, 2012)

Dam ... here I though you had bought and were going to be restoring a pink Pinto !!! 

JK/LOL ... Great story !!


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## diy.phil (May 23, 2011)

My mom had a Concord set too. Late 70's or early 80's. Didn't even have a factory stereo I think. My dad's brother took that new Peugeot to his friend's shop and they put a Concord with 2 big knobs in. The pair of Concord 6x9 on the rear shelf can probably out-bump some small subs today.


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## MythosDreamLab (Nov 28, 2020)

DaveG said:


> I'd love to hear about the cops showing up.


So it was the middle of the day and my car is parked in the friends driveway and were blasting some Blue Oyster Cult (or something from back in the day) with the doors open, windows down standing in his driveway talking over the music and out comes his neighbor from across the street yelling at us to turn it down, to which my friend promptly gives him the middle finger and the neighbor goes back in the house...

So another 10 minutes goes by an a cop pulls up at the neighbors house and jump in and turn the stereo off. Next the cops comes over and starts telling us about the complaint. Now remember this was years before the big loud stereos of the 80's & 90's when cops would pull people over for excessive bass/noise. My friend tells the policemen that we weren't even playing it very loud, that the neighbor is just a complainer. 

So the cop tells me to "show" him and I jump in, but before I turn it on, I do some quick thinking and I turn Bass & Treble to their MAX settings. I turn the stereo up, not very loud and I tell him that was the setting I was playing it at, as any higher causes too much distortion! And of course he asks me to turn it up a bit more so he can hear for himself and when I do - sure enough - horrible distortion occurs, I make a face, the cops hears how bad it sounds and leaves, talks to the neighbor and drives off, no problem..


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## MythosDreamLab (Nov 28, 2020)

I still have a 80s/90s Yamaha Car Audio Full Line brochure and two Concord brochures, one from 1985 and the other from 1987, looks like Harmon bought Concord... I could try to take some pics and post them in another thread if anyone is interested,,,(?)


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## cman (Aug 24, 2020)

MythosDreamLab said:


> So it was the middle of the day and my car is parked in the friends driveway and were blasting some Blue Oyster Cult (or something from back in the day) with the doors open, windows down standing in his driveway talking over the music and out comes his neighbor from across the street yelling at us to turn it down, to which my friend promptly gives him the middle finger and the neighbor goes back in the house...
> 
> So another 10 minutes goes by an a cop pulls up at the neighbors house and jump in and turn the stereo off. Next the cops comes over and starts telling us about the complaint. Now remember this was years before the big loud stereos of the 80's & 90's when cops would pull people over for excessive bass/noise. My friend tells the policemen that we weren't even playing it very loud, that the neighbor is just a complainer.
> 
> So the cop tells me to "show" him and I jump in, but before I turn it on, I do some quick thinking and I turn Bass & Treble to their MAX settings. I turn the stereo up, not very loud and I tell him that was the setting I was playing it at, as any higher causes too much distortion! And of course he asks me to turn it up a bit more so he can hear for himself and when I do - sure enough - horrible distortion occurs, I make a face, the cops hears how bad it sounds and leaves, talks to the neighbor and drives off, no problem..



LOL! I remember I used to have a Nissan 240SX with a 15 or 20 band equalizer, with like sliders that actually moved right beneath my deck. I had a doulbe din opening but had a single din deck and a equalizer below it... 
So funny to think about having physical sliders or "Bass" and "Treble" adjustments. I remember my home stereo that's all it had was bass and treble knobs and i would turn the bass as high as it would go without distorting... 

So happy today to have a DSP with 30 EQ bands per channel, time alignment, AND a microphone that acts an an RTA instead of having a huge box as an RTA. So crazy all the technology we have nowadays.


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## BadSS (Feb 2, 2008)

MythosDreamLab said:


> I still have a 80s/90s Yamaha Car Audio Full Line brochure and two Concord brochures, one from 1985 and the other from 1987, looks like Harmon bought Concord... I could try to take some pics and post them in another thread if anyone is interested,,,(?)


I appreciate your post and would to see more of the Westport and the Concord brochures. My first real dive into high-fidelity car audio was in the early 80s. It included a Concord HPL-525, their dbx II module added in the auxiliary loop, and a HPA-70 amp. The past 8 years or so I've been trying to pull together as much information as I can on the earlier Concord line. I had no idea that Westport was the precursor to Concord, but can definitely see the pedigree - particularly the similarities in the model numbers.


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## TrashPanda (May 21, 2021)

My best bud in HS had an 83 Cavalier hatchback and we built a monster box and put 2 12’s from Radio Shack in it, spliced into the stock wiring and pounded Brass Monkey as loud as we could. Ah the old days.

can’t tell you how many times I got pulled over early 90’s after getting some $$ and buying some actual subs/amps. Especially in Forsyth Co GA. Man I swear They had it in for me.


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