# Rocket Science by Tommy Clark.



## brackac (May 2, 2011)

Does anyone have good pics of the amplifier rack/subwoofer enclosure? I'm only able to find small pics, nothing with any type of detail. Thanks.

For those not familiar, scroll down to "Rocket Science".

Old School SPL Competition Vehicles


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## [email protected] (Nov 7, 2010)

I have scans of the mag article from back then, I will look for them when I get home..


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## brackac (May 2, 2011)

JOey Knapp said:


> I have scans of the mag article from back then, I will look for them when I get home..
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


That's why this place is as great as it is.


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## imjustjason (Jun 26, 2006)

Tommy Clark - 1989 Ford Econoline - 1989 CA&E


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## msmith (Nov 27, 2007)

I would be happy to answer any questions about that install. It was built over 20 years ago, but I think I remember most of it. 

Tommy won 3 consecutive IASCA World Titles with Rockit Science: 1989, 1990 & 1991. He then drove the vehicle with the system for over ten years.


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## Old Skewl (May 30, 2011)

Wow!! I completely forgot about Tommy and his van. That van was awesome!!


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## chefhow (Apr 29, 2007)

msmith said:


> I would be happy to answer any questions about that install. It was built over 20 years ago, but I think I remember most of it.
> 
> Tommy won 3 consecutive IASCA World Titles with Rockit Science: 1989, 1990 & 1991. He then drove the vehicle with the system for over ten years.


That was when I really got hooked, he did several demos for me at the Speaker Warehouse on Commercial. That was a work of art, absolutely so ahead of its time with the way it sounded and looked. You guys/Speaker Warehouse built some absolutely sick competition cars back then.


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## pocket5s (Jan 6, 2012)

I remember reading about all those cars. Got to listen to Harry's Acura at a finals one year. 



msmith said:


> I would be happy to answer any questions about that install. It was built over 20 years ago, but I think I remember most of it.
> 
> Tommy won 3 consecutive IASCA World Titles with Rockit Science: 1989, 1990 & 1991. He then drove the vehicle with the system for over ten years.


I also remember your mustang with that single "little" amp, those 8's and that passive crossover display. I ended up spending more than a few dollars on books about how to build crossovers because of that mustang


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## imjustjason (Jun 26, 2006)

That was actually Lucio Proni's Mustang. 

Lucio Proni - 1987 Mustang GT - 1990 CSR

From Speaker Warehouse too, but not Manville's.


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## chefhow (Apr 29, 2007)

pocket5s said:


> I remember reading about all those cars. Got to listen to Harry's Acura at a finals one year.
> 
> 
> 
> I also remember your mustang with that single "little" amp, those 8's and that passive crossover display. I ended up spending more than a few dollars on books about how to build crossovers because of that mustang


The Mustang was amazing, but from what I remember the van took it to another level.


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## pocket5s (Jan 6, 2012)

imjustjason said:


> That was actually Lucio Proni's Mustang.
> 
> Lucio Proni - 1987 Mustang GT - 1990 CSR
> 
> From Speaker Warehouse too, but not Manville's.


ahh yes. I stand corrected.


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## imjustjason (Jun 26, 2006)

My bad man, wasn't trying to correct you. Just trying to share the info.


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## pocket5s (Jan 6, 2012)

imjustjason said:


> My bad man, wasn't trying to correct you. Just trying to share the info.


oh no offense taken at all. I'd rather be corrected than continue thinking the wrong way


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## msmith (Nov 27, 2007)

My car was a 1984 Celica GT hatchback. It won the IASCA Pro 251-500W class in 1989 and 1990.

Tommy's van was lots of fun to listen to LOUD. It had bags of dynamic capability and just rocked, no matter what you played.

Mr. Proni's Mustang caused a lot of people to think that we somehow advocated doing all-passive systems, when nothing could have been further from the truth. The only reason that car wasn't bi-amped was that PPI didn't make a high-current amp smaller than 100W and that was the class limit. It was a great sounding car but would have sounded much better bi-amped.


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## brackac (May 2, 2011)

msmith said:


> I would be happy to answer any questions about that install. It was built over 20 years ago, but I think I remember most of it.


Everyone talks about the amp rack and sheer power of the install but no one ever discusses the sound stage or SQ of the system. Specifically how the front stage was arranged and installed. Would love to hear anything about the van though.


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## brackac (May 2, 2011)

I was able to listen to the infamous SpeakerWorks Grand National and Fukuda's Blazer in person years back, but I have never been more amazed or floored by an install like I was by Rocket Science. It's really sad to see how far the car audio industry has fallen in comparison to the glory days of the early to mid 90's.


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## msmith (Nov 27, 2007)

brackac said:


> Everyone talks about the amp rack and sheer power of the install but no one ever discusses the sound stage or SQ of the system. Specifically how the front stage was arranged and installed. Would love to hear anything about the van though.


Well, you didn't win three IASCA championships in a row back then with weak sound quality. 

A popular narrative among the haters back in the day was that Tommy's van won based on installation scores and that it didn't sound as good as some of the competition. In every single IASCA Finals he posted the top sound quality score in his class. He also did well in installation, and SPL and RTA... that's why he kept winning.

A Ford Econoline is a very difficult vehicle to get to image correctly. You can't do it with conventional approaches because the seating positions are radically off-center and the path length differences are severe. We experimented with different setups for a looong time before arriving at the final layout.

The front stage of the system consisted of an MB Quart 8-inch 3-way set (8-inch mid bass, 4 inch tweeter, 1-inch dome), in each door. There was a second 8-inch 3-way set with the woofer mounted above the listeners in the overhead console and the mid and tweeter mounted in a raised structure in the center of the dash. An additional pair of tweeters was deployed in the upper portion of the A-pillars (crossed over really high), to help raise the soundstage's edges. Because there was no fancy processing available, we used simple phasing and level adjustments (and a few passive crossover tweaks) to dial in the front stage. 

The only active processing was an AudioControl Epicenter, a pair of PPI active crossovers and a pair of PPI PAR-224 four-band parametric EQ's... the Concord EQ was just for show because it was a noisy POS. Later, a Clark Audio noise gate was added.

The rear stage consisted of four 8-inch drivers on each side (8 total), mounted on fiberglass pods that attached to the side walls of the van. The rearmost and forward most drivers were 8-inch coaxials... the middle ones were just woofers. These played very quietly during SQ competition but could be dialed up to unleash pretty impressive full-range audio output in crank-it-up "party" mode.

The subwoofer enclosure was built in two 12 cu.ft. halves from MDF and fiberglass, with steel reinforcement. It consisted of two sealed chambers, each with six JL Audio 12W5 subwoofers, for a total of twelve.

The six sub amps were all high-current PPI ProMos "100W" amps, which produced about 400W into two woofers each (200W each). The satellite amps were also ProMos "100W" amps. One drove the front stage and the other one drove the rear. The huge amp rack was built out of steel and was hinged at the bottom and swung down using a monster linear actuator with gas shock assist. Once lowered, the amp "plug" would split apart showing off the wiring of the amplifiers inside. This was done with a worm-drive mechanism.

So, how did it sound? As I mentioned before, you don't win three in a row with a bad sounding system. Rockit Science had a very solid sound stage, wide to the pillars and nice and high, with excellent depth and stability. Imaging was pretty solid... perhaps not as good as a handful of other cars out there that had physical advantages over an Econoline van, but still very good. Where the vehicle totally dominated was in spectral balance, separation and linearity. It always received very high scores in these areas.


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## brackac (May 2, 2011)

Appreciate the responses. It's sad that the glory days of car audio are in the rear view mirror.


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