# Old school budget builds that came out way better than they should have.



## Buickmike (Aug 10, 2012)

Hey all,

One of these days I'll find the pictures and post up, but I'd like to hear stories of real world budget car audio builds or parts that turned out incredibly well. Most of us are here hoarding the high dollar stuff because we could not afford it back then, so let's hear stories of what you had and how it worked out?

I'll share some:

My first amp...a Hifonics Cupid VII. I bought it in 1992 at a pawn shop for $50. I beat the hell out of that amp for 4 good years before trading it for an A/D/S PH15, which was also a great amp. The Cupid was almost always run in tri mode and at way lower resistance than it was rated for. Typically I ran 2 sets of mids / tweets and a 4 ohm sub bridged. There is something about running everything off a 2 channel amp with good passive crossovers. It is just so much more natural sounding than with multiple amps for 4 channels. I initially ran a pair of Alpine 6.5's, a set of Pioneer 6X9's, and a multitude of subs ranging from MTX road thunder 10", to Pyle 12", to Crunch 15", and Radio Shack 8's off that thing in my '77 Celica. I later landed in my '87 Porsche 924s running a set of plate speakers and Infinity RS 5.25" components in the front, Kenwood 4X6 in the rear, and a Punch 12" sub. That thing never failed me and ended up pushing a set of FL 8W1's in a Ranger until it was stolen 10 years later. That hit incredibly hard.

Speaking of Radio Shack 8's, I had a pair of the paper 8" woofers in an isobaric ported enclosure that I built when I was 15 years old that was just amazing. I had a friend who was trying to have an amateur soundoff and I put those up against a pair of Kicker C8's in a sealed enclosure and a Kicker C12 in a 4th order box. I killed them both in SPL and SQ with 100 watts. I ran that setup off my Cupid and it worked out great. A buddy had it in his Chevy sprint for awhile running off a Lanzar Opti Drive 50 for awhile and it was unbelievable. I used to love the looks on peoples faces when he showed them what he had.

Another fond memory was the Sennet Concepts 4X6 plates I had in my Porsche 924S. I was looking for cheap speakers and found this lady at a trade show selling these. Apparently it was some failed attempt at a child company of Altec Lansing. I bought these bad boys for $25 and they were flat out amazing. They had a tweeter and a 3.5" or 4" mid. They had crossovers with adjustable tweeter level. They were very clean and full. They really sounded like a set of components. 

One more thing that stands out is the LA Sound Laguna amp that I had. I think it was rated at 100wX4, probably a bit overrated, but honestly that thing got the job done really well. It definitely outpowered the Xtant 404M I had and still have. I initially put it in my wife's (then girlfriend) '87 BMW 325is. I bought it and a Kenwood deck dirt cheap as open box items at Sears. I ran it to the stock speakers and a 12" Series 1 sub that I got for free. Best $100 car stereo I ever had. I then placed it in my '87 GN, followed by a '97 Cavalier, and then into a 2000 F150. It eventually lost a channel and I threw it away. I wish I fixed it.


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## INTP_ty (Oct 8, 2015)

We like pictures


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## 63flip (Oct 16, 2013)

Everything I had back in the day was definitely "budget". I never bought anything new in my first couple setups. I had this monster Sherwood 1200w 4 channel amp that I ran in 3 different cars. In its life it pushed 4 Kicker c12's stereo, 2 15" Lanzar SE's bridged, and 4 PYLE 15's stereo. I used a few different head units that were all bought used. I usually managed to replace the factory speakers with something from PYLE, Kenwood, or Pioneer. That were always ran off the head unit. Back then it was all about the BASS! All of that stuff was bought used and dirt cheap. 
The first gear I ever bought new was a Kenwood 4011s HU and one of those pairs of PYLE 15's.


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## sqshoestring (Jun 19, 2007)

One of the first amps I got was the old coustic, they looked like a linear power and were all black. They were budget amps a guy was upgrading. Turns out they pounded pretty good later I had three of them. Eventually I moved on to other stuff maybe I should have kept them but they did suck power like crazy. I had a system (a long time ago lol) with four pyramid paper tens IB, two 300w coustics, sansui 6x9, radio shack 1" dome tweets, the HU was I think a 8001 kenwood the best knob deck at the time, a nakamichi 2 way xover I found used I actually still have, and I think boston acoustics 4" mids. Anyway that system worked really well for some reason and impressed a lot of people, though nobody had systems like that back then. Maybe it was the car, it really rocked and had some good SQ (on my metal tapes made on a nak home deck), and sure was an odd collection of stuff. It could shake the mirrors and rattle the trunk easily. 

It took me a lot of swapping to get the right things in there to work well without an EQ. I tried a few EQ they all put noise in the system, I could not find one I could afford that didn't (at least in that local area). I ran resistors on the fronts to tune the fade and still run parallel, so the 6x9/mids/tweets all ran off one 2ch amp lol. Later I swapped to a blaupunkt bpa 260 on the subs, got that for cheap everyone hated them. It worked great on IB subs it seemed to have a low SS filter in there someplace but still thumped. It would put out more without breaking up and beat the coustic 300, which was really strange. Didn't sound the best on highs. Its an STK IC amp like one of the ADS. Took me a long time to beat that system later in other cars, though I could not always put that much time into tuning and swapping as I did for that one. I still have a couple bpa 260 here someplace.

I was buying the pyramid 10s for like $12 each, the RS tweets were $6 each. The rest was used. The pyramids would blow in about 2 years lol and need replaced, but worked awesome on limited power like that. I still had maybe $400 into that system, and a LP 200w amp cost about 300 then iirc. I think this was before '90, I would park my cool car and buy a winter car every year for $50-200, an rusty but running car I could drive maybe equal to a $2K car today. Maybe I'm getting old lol but wow was that fun when hardly anyone had systems and subwoofers.

I remember one winter I managed to pay extra for a horizon or omni car as the fwd were way nicer in the snow. So I built a box that just fit the hatch and ended up running a pair of 10s in there in the back corners. I know now they horned up the hatch, but at the time I was flat out amazed at the output I got from that. I would drive by the projects going to work one summer and all of them would look, but not at my little boxy crap car, and they never could figure out who was thumping lol. Those were fun days. Got 35mpg with that pos every day, parked the summer car for a while because I drove all over for that job and this got near 3X the mpg as the big block car. I had to try to make it fun, and one point I had four 6x9 on top of the sub box in a flat box, it was great for parties but not so good for SQ in the car. But it was fun for sure, think I had kenwood 6.5 in the front doors of that.

Friend of mine ran the RS 8s, they worked well for 8s but were not like 10s. He still has some of my old stuff I bet, I know he has the coustics he begged and begged for them finally I dusted them off and sold them to him for his old hotrod car. He also bought the kenwood HU for it.


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## Buickmike (Aug 10, 2012)

Nice! I love hearing these kind of stories. Funny you mentioned RS tweeters. I bought their el cheapo car audio tweeters for $12 or so and replaced the harsh ass MB Quart titanium tweeters I had in my CRX. They honestly sounded sooo much better. I think I even ditched the MB Quart crossovers for the tweets and used the ones left over from the Infinity RS series that got stolen from me. Actually they got recovered. The cops gave me back the 5.25" mids, but kept the tweets. 

So I now need to elaborate on the first system I put in my '87 GN. It was the low end $50 open box Kenwood CD headunit that I pulled from the BMW mentioned earlier, $50 open box Laguna amp, Radio Shack tweets and my Kicker 3.5" mids in the dash, cheap ass Phase Linear 5.25" full range speakers in the doors that I got for free, my old 1992 Pioneer 2 way 6X9's in the rear deck, and the Series 1 sub in a 1.75ft ported box in the trunk. We are talking maybe $200 invested, but the wiring, 3.5" mids, 6X9's, and tweets were cheap junk that was laying around from years prior. It sounded really good. I had a friend who was into high end audio who sat in my car for a freaking hour listening to his favorite CD's and could not believe how good it sounded. You want to know what's sad? I have gone through multiple other setups and cannot come close to that setup. I have an Eclipse 5303 headunit, Focal 136K's in the door / kicks, had an XTANT 404M, now Opti Drive 50 and 100's, two 10" RF Audiophile subs (tried rear and front facing, sealed and ported), had Boston plates for rear fill and now they are gone, and it sounds like **** to me. I think the lack of midbass and lack of efficiency on the Focal separates just messes it up. Not to mention that the RF Audiophiles are tough to dial in. Add all the vibration from all poly body mounts and a built motor and it is a disaster. I should just rip it all out and have cheap coax and 6X9's powerered off a 2ch amp.


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## sqshoestring (Jun 19, 2007)

GN you can put pair of 10s in the rear deck IB, they sound really good but limited to what 10s will take IB, maybe 300rms+ depending on the subs. Used to put them in cutlass/etc all the time way back in the day. There is a little trick to it but it works great.


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## wurgerd9 (Mar 22, 2013)

My first system that really blew me away was pretty budget... mostly because I was working at a car stereo shop and got employee discount! This was in a 1988 Dodge Daytona Shelby Z. Through the store I bought a Sony mobile ES CDX-C860 head (paid $150) and Advent ICT speakers (they were a "point source" style coaxial). I had the Advent 6.5i set in the front doors (Car Stereo Review had tested and loved them) and put the 4" 4.0i in the rears with an adapter plate. From my previous car I brought over my sub and amp. Again, CSR had done a box builder test of the Blaupunkt Velocity VPC-10D subwoofer and loved it's performance in a ported box. I built the box according to their specs. The system only had one amp, a Blaupunkt BQX-300 bridgeable 50x4. I ran the fronts off the front to channels, bridged to two rear channels to run the sub and powered the rear speakers off of the Sony. I have never yet had a system that sounded better! Maybe it was the transfer function of the car and who knows what all else, but I LOVED it. It wasn't way budget, but I think it was around $600 all together.


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## sqshoestring (Jun 19, 2007)

What was with those cars, a guy at the stereo shop here had a nice system in a GLH turbo that rocked. But he was a sales guy and spent some cash on it I am sure. I had an omni that also worked well but could never get hold of a turbo, did drive one, lots of fun.


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## deayge (Nov 19, 2015)

Buickmike said:


> Nice! I love hearing these kind of stories. Funny you mentioned RS tweeters. I bought their el cheapo car audio tweeters for $12 or so and replaced the harsh ass MB Quart titanium tweeters I had in my CRX. They honestly sounded sooo much better. I think I even ditched the MB Quart crossovers for the tweets and used the ones left over from the Infinity RS series that got stolen from me. Actually they got recovered. The cops gave me back the 5.25" mids, but kept the tweets.
> 
> So I now need to elaborate on the first system I put in my '87 GN. It was the low end $50 open box Kenwood CD headunit that I pulled from the BMW mentioned earlier, $50 open box Laguna amp, Radio Shack tweets and my Kicker 3.5" mids in the dash, cheap ass Phase Linear 5.25" full range speakers in the doors that I got for free, my old 1992 Pioneer 2 way 6X9's in the rear deck, and the Series 1 sub in a 1.75ft ported box in the trunk. We are talking maybe $200 invested, but the wiring, 3.5" mids, 6X9's, and tweets were cheap junk that was laying around from years prior. It sounded really good. I had a friend who was into high end audio who sat in my car for a freaking hour listening to his favorite CD's and could not believe how good it sounded. You want to know what's sad? I have gone through multiple other setups and cannot come close to that setup. I have an Eclipse 5303 headunit, Focal 136K's in the door / kicks, had an XTANT 404M, now Opti Drive 50 and 100's, two 10" RF Audiophile subs (tried rear and front facing, sealed and ported), had Boston plates for rear fill and now they are gone, and it sounds like **** to me. I think the lack of midbass and lack of efficiency on the Focal separates just messes it up. Not to mention that the RF Audiophiles are tough to dial in. Add all the vibration from all poly body mounts and a built motor and it is a disaster. I should just rip it all out and have cheap coax and 6X9's powerered off a 2ch amp.




Sounds like you may have had some paper speakers? That may be the reason for the quality? 
My real question was you ditching the MB quarts crossovers? Why di you do that? 

I have some music comps im still in the "collecting phase" I need more speakers to blow lol but so far Im not seeing the crossovers as worth a damn. 

Next Im gonna add a bandpass xover and a 4 ohm mid to drop to 2 ohms (amp handles it) and see how that sounds. For now Im playing with the paper HK sperkers from my bmw e36


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## Buickmike (Aug 10, 2012)

They were the titanium tweets. The x-overs got sold with the speakers and the car. What's funny is that a year later I ended up buying a '90 CRX with the same series MB Quarts, but this one had 5.25" mids and no x-overs. I still hated the tweeters. i like the Infinity tweeter x-overs because they work well with dome tweeters. They don't allow them to play midrange frequencies which made them sound harsh.


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## deayge (Nov 19, 2015)

That memes sence. when I hooked up a 2.5 tweet to the mb overs it sounded harsh like the speaker could not play that high, very little lows, but that was a 3 ohm speaker. I think the Quartz were designed for either 4 or 6 ohms. It's hard to say because there is no info about them. I can already see the benefit of going active


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