rotarygod

I didn't want to thread jack another thread so I thought I'd share these here. As many of you know I was very involved in car audio installation and competition for many years. Here are some pictures of some of the cars that I had a part in building. I hope you enjoy them. Sorry if the quality is bad.

The first set of pictures are of Earl Will's Impala SS. It was originally built by Howie Liwanag but Earl brought the car here to Houston from Alabama for us to rebuild it. Some of these re-construction pictures are frightening.

This first shot is the Impala as it sat on our show room floor. We bought this car from Earl after it won IASCA World Finals in 1997. To the best of my knowledge it is still here.

rotarygod

A shot of the Impala dash.

Back then if you wanted a TV screen in the car, you actually had to install a TV!!!

rotarygod

Here is the original amp rack as it was when we received the car. These are all Zapco amps. We replaced them with 6 Kicker amps. The 18" subs are barely visable pointed downward from the rear deck. That is a VCR and CD changer under the subs in a motorized rack. We had to redo the workings of all of that crap. The subs were originally set up as an aperiodic system. We removed it and ran it free air!

rotarygod

Reconstruction time! This is the trunk after it was taken back apart. Look at that mess! After we reassembled it we installed airbags on the rear suspension to hold the weight. We should have done it when the car was apart at this stage. While welding under the car, the floor got so hot that the box caught on fire! We got it out but you couldn't see it. As the car sits today, the back of the box is still charred.

rotarygod

Here is a shot of the amp rack on the workbench. You can see a Kicker amp heatsink sitting on top of it. How the hell can we fit that in there? You also see how the original system fans were installed. Gotta love duct tape! Actually it is only holding down the wires. The fans are just press fit in. We're going to change that.

rotarygod

Torn up interior with all of the electronics removed from the center console.

rotarygod

Center console back together. These are the eq's and the crossover. They are rack mount units from Image Dynamics. The eq was never sold to the public. It was a prototype. It worked good for us!

rotarygod

Here is the new amp rack Audio Designs style! No more Zapco. All Kicker.

rotarygod

This is Earl Wills. See I told you we won! This is 1st place in Pro 601+ SQ and SQ+ at the 1997 IASCA World Finals. Not bad. When he sold the car to us he also let us keep the trophys.

DreamWarrior

Why the heck did you replace Zapco gear with KICKER?!?! The two companies are on two completely different levels.

Either way, nice ****...those are old style Zapco amps, I myself had the C2K series, great gear if you can afford it.

rotarygod

We stopped carrying Zapco around then since Robert Zef sold the company. Zapco went downhill after that. We were a huge Kicker retail shop. Kicker had much more power and the car actually sounded much better when we were done.

The car had won finals in 1994 but then couldn't win again for the next 2 years. After we re-did it with Kicker and changed a few other things it won again. It was a good move.

Also remember one thing. The installation and tuning almost have a bigger effect on winning than the equipment that is used. Mark Eldridge keeps winning the top expert class. He won with MTX. He won with Kicker. Now he is winning with JBL. That's got to say something.

Omicron

Nice stuff, RG. Veeeeery impressive work!

Now damnit, would you PLEASE buy yourself an RX-8 so you can start coming out with cool stuff for it?!?!?!!!!

:D

guy321

We could all chip in $1000 and buy him one. Then he'd be obligated to us!! muaaahhahaha

DreamWarrior

The tuning and speaker placement has a lot to do with it, but the quality of the Zapco amps just seems to be much higher than that of Kicker. I had Rockford Fosgate stuff in my first system and those amps were not capable of putting out rated power consistently and I had to back off the volume a lot more than with the Zapco amps (and their wattage ratings were lower than those of the Fosgate amps).

Just my opinion, but while Zapco may be expensive stuff, I think you get what you pay for. They never gave me a lick of trouble and sounded amazing up until the day they got stolen . I couldn't say that about the Fosgate amps I had (and I rank them around the same quality as Kicker).

rotarygod

I sold Fosgate for a while. I have never used them and I never would on anything other than subs. The Kicker amps were better sounding than the Fosgates in my opinion. They are actually better than they get credit for. I personally wouldn't have used them as my first choice but then again, Kicker was sponsoring the refit of the car. You don't argue with the people in charge of paying you. We were also a huge Kicker retailer. They were our main line. After Robert Zef sold Zapco somewhere around 1997 or so, their product wasn't worth touching anymore and we dropped the line completely. You use what you sell. My current amp of choice (solid state) is Lunar. I forgot what Robert Zef's current company is called, but they make some damn fine amps too.

DreamWarrior

Humm...I had the Zapco C2K series amps and used their signal processesors (two 30 band EQ's and a 5 band parametric w/ x-over) and never had any problems. The amps produced serious power and, while pricey, were well worth my money. The other equpiment functioned great without fault and made for an absolutely amazing sound car that was highly tunable. What, in your opinion, made their line "not worth touching" after Zef sold the company?

As for his current line...maybe Arc Audio? I've heard they're a sister company but I don't find Robert Zef's name anywhere on their site? Not familiar with Lunar, I've heard of them...but never played with them. As for solid state, do we even have an option in car audio (besides those insanely priced tube amps by that company whos name I can't remember a while back?).

rotarygod

Arc Audio, that's what I was thinking of. That is some good stuff.

You have to remember that when you are in the industry there are many different reasons why you do or do not want to do business with someone. In the case of Zapco, their dealer support went down hill and they didn't seem to care about us anymore. That's a good enough excuse as any to sever ties with themso we moved on and just proved that there is always an alternative. Ever since then we didn't use their product. I'm sure it is still good stuff. If you can win with Kicker or Rockford then Zapco can't sound that bad.

I love tube amps. I have one at home. I wish there was a decent one for the car but there isn't. Everyone is so caught up with more power that they are getting away from the purity aspect of audio.