It all started in the spring of '98. I had decided to buy a deck for the minivan which I would be driving all summer. After careful consideration (yeah, right) I ended up buying a Panasonic. I didn't think much of it at the time, but this ended up being a pretty good deck for the price. I threw it in the van and was happy for a while, it was an amazing improvement over the stock system. I was happy for a a couple of weeks, but then I started to think that I should buy some new front speakers, so I bought a pair of Blaupunkt coaxial speakers that were on sale. Those definitely improved sound quality, they were 4 ohm speakers, unlike the stock 8 ohms speakers, and they could handle much more power.

I ran this setup for quite a while, but I began to realize that this stereo would never be good without some bass. After deciding to go with a single ten, I bought a Phoenix Gold QX2100 amp to power the sub. I went with only a single ten for two reasons: first my budget was not huge and second, I figured one ten being driven hard would be enough bass for me. I was very happy with the Phoenix Gold amp, it very clean and for the price, very powerful amp. The amp was rated at 100 watts RMS when bridged, but I measured more, and when I asked Phoenix Gold they said that the amp could do 180 watts, needless to say the amp is underrated. I chose a JL Audio ten inch subwoofer, the new W0 model. This is a very good sub for the price, it has high output and excellent sound quality. I had my shop design a ported box for the sub and I built it out of 3/4 inch MDF. I was very impressed with the sub. I mounted the amp under the drivers seat and the sub was placed at the very rear of the van with the port being corner loaded into the wall of the van. You might think that a single ten in a van wouldn't provide much bass, but because it was a high-quality sub and amp in a well designed box, the output was excellent. The bass was quite impressive for the components and the vehicle. I chalk alot of it up to good box design, the box can make a huge difference. Everyone who heard commentented: "You've only got one ten in here?" Even the guys at the shop were surprised by the output

I kept this setup for a bit, but, after some time I came to realize that my front speakers were quite harsh, and they weren't that loud. I decided to buy a pair of components and I ended up buying a pair of Soundstream SPL50 5 1/4s. These speakers are exceptional. Even though they were installed in a bad postion (firing into the windshield) and not in very good enclosures they still sounded quite good.

As soon as I picked up the Soundstreams I realized that deck power was a joke for these speakers, it was time to buy another amp. I picked up an older Kenwood 4-channel amp from a friend. This was a sweet amp in it's day, it has dual variable crossovers and all the other goodies you'd find in a decent amp, even though it's at least five years old. I emailed Kenwood to get the specs and they rated it at around 50 watts RMS X 4 into 4 ohms, from what I heard, that's about right. I ran the Soundstream components off of the front two channels. On the rear channels I ran my old Blaupunkt coaxes and a pair of Paradigm house speakers in parrallel. The Blaupunkts went under the middle bench in boxes I made and the house speakerts were integrated into a shelf behind the rear seat that covered the sub and one of the amps.

The reason for running this many speakers was so that everyone in the van would have a loud listening position. This seemed to work. Even sitting in the back seat beside the sub, the mids were not drowned out at all. At this point my stereo was beginning to cut into my budget for school in the fall so I had to stop there, otherwise I probably would have gone for some more bass, maybe two or three more JL tens.

I had some great fun with this system though. I remeber once pulling up at a light and there was a guy with a little ranger two lanes over who was playing his stereo. I could just barely hear him, but I knew that he wasn't running a stock stereo. I turned to my friend and smiled as I maxed out my stereo. The three occupants in the truck all did a double take, they all looked over and stared at us. They were pretty surprised to see a minivan that was loud. Stuff like this used to happen all the time. I'd be at a light playing the stereo loud and people would look all over for the car with the loud system, never considering that maybe it was the minivan parked beside them. One time a guy in the car beside me was so confused, he couldn't figure out where the music was coming from, he must have thought he was tripping out. One of the funninest comments I got was when I was parked at McDonalds eating with a friend, listening at low volume. There was a guy in a Ford truck parked beside us. We were eating and I cranked the volume for part of a song to show my friend some cool bass and the guy leaned out his window and stares. I turned down the volume and he said: 'Thats pretty good bass for a family vehicle", he was really surprised. We just started to laugh. I had lots a fun that summer, playing the stereo loud and surprising people. Not to mention the advantages of having your stereo in a plain vehicle (ie. much less chance of theft - I never did get around to buying an alarm, and stereos were stolen often in my town).

Well then the summer ended so I had to pull it all out, I was going off to school and leaving the van behind. I nearly cried will ripping it out. Well actually I didn't even come close to crying, but I was quite sad

Then a month later, while I was at school, I bought a 12V power supply and I hooked up the stereo in my dorm room. The dorm room is tiny and I also added a Paradigm self-powered ten inch home sub to the car stuff (the home sub has a 100 watt RMS amp built in). This made for two ten inch subs in a little room, plus 6 main speakers. Needless to say this shook my room beyond belief. The building was concrete and the people upstairs told me that when I played it loud their desks shook! Actually it was probably the loudest stereo in residence.

Well, I think that is it, for now anyway. I am planning on re-installing it in another vehicle in the fall and possibly upgrading some of the components if I have the funds. I'm gonna try and pick up a Phoenix Gold XS2500 and then run three Jl Audio 10 W0s off of it. The amp does a good 700 watts (RMS of course) so, it would be pretty sweet. Then I can use the output filter from the XS amp and send the crossed over signal to my Phoenix QX2100 in order to run my Soundstream components off of that amp. I could then bridge the Kenwood to 2 channels for my rear fill speakers (5 1/4 coaxes). If I do this I'll probably pick up a line driver too. This would be a pretty sweet setup, now I just gotta get some money...

Check out the install pictures and the diagram for more info. Sorry, I don't have any install pics from my room, maybe later!