If you judge how good your car sound is by the number of 'name' brands and how much money you've shelled out, then read no further. But if you want good sound in your car at a budget price, this is for you! If you're on a bare-bones budget, the cheapest way to get good car sound equipment is by buying through newspaper and Web classifieds, or in a secondhand store. Yep, buying secondhand generally knocks a minimum of 50 per cent off the price. Another way of saying this is that you just got your gear at half price!
Planning the System
If you plan carefully, you can find the best bargains as they appear, buying bits and pieces along the way. And if you plan really carefully, you can even listen to the system long before it's complete! But there's a right way and a wrong way of going about assembling a system.
You could make a big mistake by starting with a front end (CD radio or AM/FM cassette) that hasn't got line level outputs. Line level outputs (sometimes called RCA outs) are the sort that you need to feed into an amp before you'll get really loud sound.
If you can't afford an amp yet, you might think that a front end with only speaker level outputs is fine. Except that when you want to upgrade to a system using one (or more) amps, your front end with just speaker level outs becomes a liability. And since most front ends with line level outs also have a small amplifier inside them, you can still listen to the deck before you've bought the amp.
Another mistake is that you could get a pair of 6 inch 3-ways for the rear shelf and then find that you want to use those same holes to feed bass from a sub-woofer into the cabin. There are a lot of ways to assemble a system so that later you need to go backwards - but there are also a lot of ways where you can just keep on adding stuff without any problems.
Here are a few simple rules.
Start off with a front end that uses the signal source that you want the system to end up with. So, if you want a system that ends up with a single CD radio, start off with that sort of front end. If you want a radio cassette in the dash controlling a CD changer, buy a front end that has this capability. And note that feeding a CD changer through the front end using an FM radio adaptor isn't really good.
For speakers, fit front splits into the doors or kick panels first. This where a 5 or 6 inch mid-bass unit is fitted in the lower part of the door with a tweeter up the top. Doing this doesn't cost a heap but lets you listen to the system before you add the rest.
When you can afford an amp, buy one with as many features as possible. Don't laugh - lots of people don't do this and then have to add other bits to make it all work! Finally, if you can get a sub that has a proper box design available for it - you're way out ahead. Putting sub drivers into random designed boxes is a no-win situation.
So keep in mind what you want to end up with and don't head down too many blind alleys.
The Front End
The front end might comprise an AM/FM radio cassette, an AM/FM radio cassette with CD changer control function, or a single CD with an AM/FM radio. When buying used, first make sure that all the functions work! That means bass and treble controls shouldn't be scratchy, volume, balance and fader controls should all work smoothly, all segments of digital displays should function, and so on.
With a deck featuring a cassette function, make sure that the tape slides in and ejects easily, and fast forward and rewind functions both work. Play a tape and listen carefully for wow and flutter. Both of these are caused by changes in the tape speed. Wow is a slow up-and-down movement in what should be a steady tone, while flutter is the same but happens faster. One of the deficiencies of tape players over CD (and it's a bloody big one!) is a lack of frequency response. This means that deep bass and high treble are missing in all but the best cassette decks. The easier of these to pick is a lack of treble. Listen carefully (and make sure that the demonstration speaker system uses tweeters!), and if the tape sounds lifeless, muddy or lacks sparkle, it's probably because there's no treble there.
With radio front ends, make sure that the scan and memo functions work properly, that is, you can search for different stations and then log them to the different station numbers. This sort of stuff rarely goes wrong, but it takes only a few moments to check it. Unlike tape, you should be able to get good sound on FM even from a budget deck. Again, listen carefully for good highs and lows.
Almost all CD players - even cheap ones - give good sound. Sure, the very best players will be even better, but in a noisy environment like a car, even a cheap CD player will be pretty acceptable. Check that the disc loads and plays as it should.
With a CD changer, make sure that different discs can be selected and then played. Check that the player can track a CD that is slightly scratched - if you have a damaged CD, take it along with you. Finally, knock and vibrate the CD player to see how easily it jumps. If your car has a firm suspension, this is a really important thing to check!
Amps
Let's say that you want the amp to drive a big sub and a couple of other speakers - say those front door splits. (But if you want, the front splits can be driven by the head unit while the amp drives even more speakers.) To do this you will need an amp with three channels - one for each of the front splits, and another for the sub. Three channel amps are rare (but not unknown) so you're better off looking for a used four channel design. Then you can bridge one pair of channels and drive the sub in that way. In fact, that gives you even more power for the sub, because bridged channels develop lots more power than just using a single channel. So basically, a four channel amp is pretty useful as a general purpose powerhouse. But if you can't find a four channel unit, don't pass up a good two channel amp - they're still very useful.
So what else do you need to look out for? Firstly, if you want to save money further down the line, you'll want an amp that has an in-built cross-over. This is because you want only the deepest bass to come out of the sub, which means that treble and midrange notes should be filtered out. An amp with a low-pass cross-over lets you do this.
Another thing to look out for is a bass boost switch. Basically, it's like the bass function on a head unit, except it's built into the amp. It will have 'Bass Boost' or something like that written on it and also '+6' or '+9'. Hitting the +9 position means that you've increased bass by about three-quarters the amount that you get turning the bass control on the head unit up full.
When you mention amplifier power - or watts - people get really excited. Unfortunately, what's written on the amplifier doesn't always bear much relationship to reality. So an amp with 400 watts written on it might have more like 10 watts RMS x 4 available. And 10 x 4 = 40, not 400... Another thing is that the power rating of the amp counts for nothing unless you also know the distortion which is occurring at that power. This sort of stuff is available in the specs sheet, but if you're buying used, the seller is unlikely to have the original instruction book available.
Instead, it's easier to go for 'name' brands. If the amp says Pioneer or Sanyo or Coustic or Alpine or Earthquake or... and it has 50 watts RMS per channel written on it, you're probably home and hosed buying it.
And how much power do you need? If we're talking about real watts, the minimum that you want is about 40 watts RMS per front channel and about 100 watts RMS for the sub. Sure, you can go a lot higher. But amp power costs an arm and a leg as you go upwards, and it's a fact of scientific life that the loudness of the sound doesn't double when you go from 100 watts to 200 watts. The price probably does, though.....
Testing an amp to its full capability is pretty hard when you're looking at buying it used. That means that you need to look for clues as to how good it is. In addition to its brand name, look at the size of the power supply terminals and the fuse rating. A four channel amp with 50 watts RMS per channel draws a heap of current - maybe 40 amps. The only way that this juice can be supplied is through thick cables - and if the amp has just puny screw-down terminals to connect the cable to, you can be guaranteed that the rest of the amp is pretty puny too! Also, if the amp is of good quality, it will have an external fuse which should be rated at an appropriate (high) current rating.
Finally, amps dissipate a heap of heat when working hard. A top amp will have in-built fan cooling, while all amps should have heavy aluminium heat sinks and a solid construction.
Speakers
It's the speakers that turn the electrical impulses into sound, so they're damned important. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to tell what the speakers will sound like unless you install them into your car and have a good listen. That's because a speaker is very much influenced by how and where it's mounted. Even the best sub will sound terrible if the bare driver is sat on your back seat! A tweeter of superlative quality will sound mushy if it's mounted so that it fires straight into a seat.
All of that means that you need to be guided by brand name and other factors that you can see, rather than sounds that you can hear. That's unless the seller of the gear is happy for you to install the speakers before you buy!
Let's start off with subs. You can tell more about these by just looking than any of the other speakers. First up, the driver should be heavy. This indicates that the frame (basket) and magnet are large and strong. When you look at the back of the driver you should see a big magnet. If the frame is made of something better than pressed steel, that's good as well. Better quality subs also have elaborate gold-plated screw-down terminals.
When you turn over the speaker, you can check out the suspension around the edge of the cone. It should be of rolled foam and look like it can cater for a large cone movement. The rolled edge is the main suspension, but there is also another suspension piece (the spider) down near where the coil is. If you peer in at an angle you can check this out as well. There shouldn't be any tears or defects in either suspension system.
Very gently (using all the fingers of one hand) push down the cone. Don't dent the dust cap doing this. The cone should move down freely, with no binding. If the cone does bind (accompanied by a faint scraping noise) the voice coil is dragging on the magnet pole - don't buy it! If the cone distorts under your gently probing fingers, steer clear - it will distort during heavy bass passages as well.
When selecting used splits, examine the goods in three parts. The mid-bass units can be checked out using the same criteria that you applied to subs. The crossover (the electrical components that split the sound signal into bass and treble) shouldn't be just a bare capacitor. Instead it should comprise a small box that contains both a capacitor and an inductor (and maybe some other components as well).
The tweeters are speakers that you can listen to in the shop or at the private seller's home. The treble should be clear and pure, with life and location. Treble is the most directional of the sound frequencies, so that when you shut your eyes the sound should seem to be coming from distinct sources. With both tweeters working, the high notes should be placed distinctly across a sound stage.
Equalisers
One item that's gone way out of fashion are equalisers. Graphic equalisers can be picked up really cheaply at all places selling used car sound. Probably because many older equalisers were actually amplifier/equalisers (most with terrible quality amps), people have turned off them. But that's okay - their loss is your gain.
The trick is to pick an equaliser that has line in and line out connections. That way, it fits in between your head unit and the amplifier. Some of this type of equaliser have variable level sub-woofer outputs and other useful features. And that's in addition to letting you adjust the sound spectrum far more finely than is possible using just the bass and treble controls on the head unit.
Remember - you don't need to have the equaliser on display. Once set, it can be hidden in the glovebox or under a seat.
Conclusion
So check those classified ads and secondhand stores! You can put together a system that sounds good at less than half the price paid by others - and that's gotta be good.....
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