We absolutely love customers that are audiophiles. Customers that are in love with great quality audio just as much as we are. One of these such customers from Baltimore, Maryland bought a 2011 Toyota Tundra and was thoroughly unimpressed with the low quality factory stereo. He disliked the sound of the factory system so much that he said many times he would rather turn it off than listen to the poor sound! This customer quickly brought his truck to us not long after buying it. He had two main goals in mind for the Tundra; make the stereo sound great, and install a rear seat entertainment system for the back seat passengers.
First we started with what is located in the dash, which we like to call the “real estate.” We installed a Kenwood DNX6960 navigation and multimedia system, and interfaced the system with the factory radio steering wheel controls. This gave the customer many features along with the navigation such as bluetooth, DVD capabilities, and iPod integration. This also gave us the necessary audio signal outputs to run the amplifiers and video signal to run to the Myron and Davis SMD107 overhead DVD player that we installed in the headliner. The Myron and Davis piece is a high quality rear seat entertainment system that has a DVD player built into it. By connecting it to the Kenwood unit in the dash, he could also load a DVD up front to be controlled by the driver but visible from the overhead in the rear. This makes operation of the rear seat entertainment system much easier for the driver when the rear passengers are small children and could not reach or operate the system on their own.
The low quality paper speakers in the front and rear doors were the next to go. We installed JL Audio‘s flagship ZR 650CSi components in the front factory locations. For those of you who have never heard these speakers, they alone would be worth a visit to our store to experience. The incredible quality of these speakers cannot be given justice by a textual description. We also installed JL Audio C2650X coax speakers in the rear factory locations for a well-rounded sound. The speakers sound noticeably better than the factory Toyota speakers even powered by the radio, but in order to get the full potential we installed a JL Audio XD4004 amplifier to power them. This amplifier is a work of art. It’s an impressive amount of output for how small it is physically. This amp was installed underneath the back seat, along with a JL Audio XD6001 amplifier to run a JL Audio Stealthbox. The Stealthbox is a custom fabricated enclosure made specifically for this body style Toyota Tundra. It is a ported and tuned enclosure that comes with a JL 8W7 subwoofer. This is the highest quality subwoofer line made by JL. The W7 subwoofer line has 6 unique patents of technology, making it a force to be reckoned with. When listening to the Stealthbox in this application, it’s hard to believe it’s an 8 inch subwoofer!
To bring the sound quality of this vehicle to the next level, we installed Hushmat sound damping material in all four doors. This material is designed to absorb and dissipate the energy produced by the speakers. It reduces the vibration in the doors and helps increase the sound quality of the speakers, adding density to the inner door panel.
This entire system allowed the customers dreams to become a reality. He was able to get the superior sound quality and rear seat entertainment system that he was looking for, but his expectations of what this stereo would sound like were blown away! We always love it when we sit in the vehicle with the customer after completing the job, and as soon as the first song starts to play they get a huge grin from ear to ear. That’s our goal!
