1999 Mustang GT custom stereo system
I spend a LOT of time in my car. I am unable to really
listen to music at home because of the kids and the wife.
Because of these reasons my car has become my "listening
room".
Although the Mach 460 factory system is a very good system
by factory standards it really wasn't up to par for my
discerning ear. The Mach 460 is very bass heavy while being
weak in the mid range and a little muddy for the high end.
Most people wouldn't notice ..... I did.
I built this stereo system in an attempt to get as close to
live concert quality as I good while remaining reasonable cost
controls. (I didn't want to spend a fortune doing this!)
Note: I will be posting some pictures of MY
installation as soon as I am able to take some.
Stealth Installation:
It was very important to create a "Stealth" installation.
One should be able to look at the car and not see amps/wiring,
or anything other than the factory speaker grills.
With the exception of the sub-woofer I was quite successful
in this regard. (And I will rectify this also as funds
permit)
The components are as follows:
Pioneer DEH-835R head unit. (With RDS)
The head unit installed in the 'Stang: Notice
that the space where the factory CD player used to be is now a
nifty CD holder/Storage bin?
Amps:
The amps are mounted on a hidden, custom
amplifier rack that I built in the forward part of my trunk.
This rack currently holds 3 amps, a pair of cross-over for the
Infinity Kappas and a capacitor.
MTX Road Thunder 2200X amp: (2)
This amp is officially rated at 100 Watts X
2 channels, but in actuality it puts out 129 Watts X 2. MTX is
renowned for underrating their amps. One of these amps powers
the Infinity Kappa component speakers in the front of the car.
The other one powers the sub-woofer in the trunk. All I can
say about this amp is that it is nothing short of fantastic
!
Alpine 5 channel amp:
This one amp originally powered my entire system. It is
mounted on a hidden, custom amplifier rack that I built in the
forward part of my trunk.
This Alpine Flex5 amp is now bridged to power the rear
Alpine speakers. The front speakers (Infinity-Kappas) require
a ton of power so they have their own amp. (See next
paragraph)
The amps installed in my trunk.
(Click
here or on the picture for a larger image)
Notice that they are installed behind the
rear fold down seat. They are hidden from view from both the
outside of the car looking in, and from the trunk looking
forward. If you didn't fold the seat down you wouldn't know
that a non-stock amplifier is in the car. The only negative
is that I lose the pass-thru storage, but hey, that's what the
Taurus SHO is for!
The second MTX 2200X is installed on
the rear of the above rack. This amp is bridged to 200 (258)
X 1 and powers the sub-woofer. It's well suited to the task.
Capacitor (No picture yet)
In order to run three amps I needed to add
a capacitor to the system to store the battery voltage. This
ensures that the amps always have the power that they need AND
that the alternator does not have to strain to provide it to
them.
Infinity Kappa 57.1cs component speaker set.
(With crossovers)
These are my front image drivers. They mount into the
factory speaker locations. The tweeters were mounted in the
"A" pillar pod that was used by the Mach 460 tweeters.
Alpine 5.25" co-axial speakers.
rear fill -- mounted in stock locations in the rear
deck. I removed the Mach 460 speaker enclosure and shaved
about 40 lbs. off of the car in doing so. All original
components can be replaced when selling the car. (If so
desired).
10" Polk Sub-Woofer in Q-Logic
box
Not my ideal solution, but adequate for now and cheap!
It sounds fantastic! Ideally I'd like something a little more
"stealth". But, it's in the trunk and sounds great so I'll
live with it!
Dynomat
The Bazooka was vibrating the heck out of my rear package
shelf. It was so bad that I had to keep the bass turned way
down because it was too annoying to listen to.
I'm please to say that a minimal amount of Dynomat sound
damping material has solved this problem and the sub-woofer
now sounds far better than ever before. The Dynomat was
applied to the bottom of the trunk lid and to the bottom of
the package shelf. That's all it took.
Final notes & Future directions:
The sub-woofer is the one
"non-stealth" component that is in my car. It sounds good,
but is very unsightly. It's round design also makes it tough
to keep in one place.
I've decided that as soon as funds permit I will be
replacing the Bazooka with a JL Audio Stealthbox for the 99
Mustang. The JL audio Stealthbox is totally hidden from
view. For example: Can you see the stealthbox in this
picture?
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