Luke Ouellet

Yeah the truck has been through 4 builds already so the frame work was there for a few of the pieces. Actually love the box - it was that or an MTI Acoustics Stage 2 Box. Came down to lead time on the build I was doing at the time and would have ended up with the same subwoofers no matter what. I've come to prefer sealed vs. ported as well and the fiberglass construction is beyond sturdy. I also like that the JL box sits behind the front lip of the seats, every picture of the MTI boxes I see has the box project out past the seats and I'm not a big fan of that. The box has 2, 12" JL Audio 12 TW3-D8's wired at 2 ohms rated for 400W RMS each. Sub amp is giving them 880W. Previous build was giving them 600W and with a proper tune now, it is night and day. They play flat down to about 27-28hz, which I'll happily take for a sealed box with 12s. I am certainly tuned more for sound quality but they boogie when they want to.

Yup - the front speaker is a full range signal with some slight bass roll off at really high volumes. If you replace the dash corner speaker with a tweeter, I would recommend an inline crossover or capacitor. The dash corners are fed with frequencies too low for a tweeter. If you replace the dash corner with a wideband (like Audiofrog's GS25, it is plug and play and handles 200hz all the way to 20,000hz, safely.

Thanks! And it's a dramatic difference from any OEM system I have ever heard. Range rover, Benz - the key is in the DSP, it's an insanely powerful audio tool - esp. the Helix. I had actually done the main speaker wire harness and power from my previous build but knocked everything else out in 2 weekday night and 2 very long weekend days. Tuning has been on going though. The Stealthbox I had gotten lucky - Crutchfield never has them in stock and when I was chatting with an agent, they had just gotten one in stock that day - I immediately pulled the trigger, felt like fate.

I started initially using the AutoEQ feature in the Helix Suite with a UMIK-1 and honestly got some decent results. A little boomy in the 500 - 2k hz area but honestly for a 5 min tune, it was very passable. Parameters for AutoEQ were: All crossovers were LR 24db/octave Subs were 20hz HP and 80hz LP GB60s were 80hz HP and 1800hz LP GB15s were 1800hz HP only GS62 in rear were 80hz HP only I played a bit with it but eventually got a remote tune. I hooked up with Shannon Price this Saturday to knock out a a basic remote tune of the system. He was very competitively priced and figured it would at least be a small crash course in witnessing how he tunes, measures, adjusts, etc. as I have never seen the process done live. He spent a couple hours with me and got me pretty much 90% there and I tweaked the rest of the way to finalize the center of the stage, integrate my rears and global EQ. In full disclosure, I ran out of time to save my final measurements properly (new REW user) after I integrated my rear speakers and did some final global eq adjusting. The small hole you see @ 50-60 hz is filled and I took a touch off of the hump at 80-100hz to create a much more linear rise from 200 hz up to ~35 hz. I have rears crossed at 155 hz, 24 and 5000, 24 - this helped keeping them from distracting from my front stage at all, just a compliment. Overall, this was a drastic step up from the AutoEQ but still think the AutoEQ has a ton of value vs time invested tuning. I had Shannon measure my the autoEQ in red and it is shown here against his final tune (before my rears were added and my Global EQ adjustments) and you can see the big improvement. I had suspected my 200 - 1000hz was off after realizing things sounded a little boomy, esp with lower male vocals, lower end guitar/piano notes and that certainly seemed consistent with the measurements we saw. We started on the left side - GB60s crossed at 80 hz, 24db and 1800 hz, 24db. This shows left mid, left tweet and both measured together. Had a little hole @ 800hz that we boosted gently to ease the curse but mostly disappeared once we got the whole front stage tied together. Right side of the front stage. Had a nasty hole at 200 hz that again blended mostly away after we got the whole front stage together. Left Front Stage, Right Front Stage and Overall Front Stage. Ended up quite balanced. From there, we added the subs. Ended up inverting the polarity of my subs and crossing them at 64hz, 24 db to deal with some issues we were having at the 80-150 hz area. I have to say the the blending of my bass to midbass and location of where bass is coming from is superior with this tune. Feels like the bass rises universally from the floor of the vehicle. Overall, the system just gets better with time and break in. I will continue to tweak some really minor things and hopefully can make some time to hook up with Nick for an in person tune later this spring. I think that will be another big step forward but right now, with the tools at my disposal, I am stoked. The ability to hear a bass drum getting hit by the pedal AND feeling it in your chest is hard to explain to the average listener. Or hearing the breath and tongue clicks between words, the strings of an upright bass vibrating off the fingerboard in Lake Street Dive recordings just makes me want to sit and listen to everything again. I also now notice a distinct difference between well mixed music and poor recordings, it's amazing how much more detail you pick up on. I am currently playing around with adding the bass augmentation because I find at lower volumes (when I have passengers), the low end is lacking without a major adjustment to the my sub gain on my Conductor. I will probably experiment with differential real fill and the stage expander as well to see what it does. Lastly, this is what my Helix EQ looks like. Now to begin designing and dreaming about 3 way front stage combinations that fit in these pods: https://www.instagram.com/p/CBtiKFfp...e-fb3421979177

And finally my favorite shots of the final build: Knocked this out in about 2 nights of prep work and 2 full weekend days of hands on work. From here - we tuned

The Conductor and its mount - this one piece drove a ton a major decisions in my system - swapping to digital input with my vehicle (no NavTV currently offered) meant an alternate control for master volume and I wanted to retain subwoofer gain control up front as well. The Director is nearly impossible to fit without major cosmetic modifications and I didn't care for the look or mounting options of the URC.3 - so the Conductor was my go to piece. I worked through several mounting locations and settled on making a mount in my center console cup holder. Again, another easy piece to remove and place a small plug to cover the small hole I drilled when I trade the vehicle. This is from concept drawing, paper mock up to final implementation: Now how we got there. I worked with Delander from DIYMA to take my CAD design and have him make some pieces from polycarbonate that I would then assemble and finish. The design: Then cut with his CNC: Then I glued, sanded, testfit, sanded some more and then finally painted (primed with Krylon then used 4 coats of SEM Trim Black: And the money shot, almost looks OEM:

Then came wiring and tidying up the amp rack. Mounted the amps on some small rubber washers and through bolted them. Trying to isolate them from as much vibration as I can as they are mounted on my sub enclosure: From there, I wired up the amp rack (to the extent I could outside of the truck) and added a couple layers of 1/4" CCF to the bottom of the rack to conceal the nuts and provide some additional vibration isolation: Then finally I dropped the amp rack in and wired it all up. Sat for a good half hour after I finished this phase and just enjoyed the view, stoked how well it came out for an amateur install: Clean and tidy, easily accessible for service.

The amp rack was probably my most pre-planned aspect of the build. Designed the rack in CAD to give myself some additional shelf space behind the V8 for my distribution blocks (wanted clean fuse access) and this was my final layout: Sourced some 1/4" ABS and got the shape cut out and corners rounded. I ultimately ended up scuffing the surface and putting 2 coats of SEM Trim Black paint as I didn't want the gloss black look. It also helped keep static way down and no more fingerprints I then mocked up the V8 (covered in packing tape to protect during the install/fab process) and made some final layout adjustments for the holes needed for the connections to the V8: From here - I began to pre-drill all of the holes I was going to need for power and speaker wiring. Loaded up my drill press and went to town and then mocked up with the distro blocks mounted Got my new P One amp the next day and then added that the amp rack and confirmed layout. Picked up a couple 90 deg Audioquest RCA adapters that gained me some critical clearances on the input side of the P One. Then finally, dropped the rack in for a quick test fit, can't lie, this part got me so excited that I ended up working most of the night on the truck:

From here, I moved on to my input signal. I have two items here: My LLJ harness for analog and my Topping D10S for digital. Here is the LLJ Loopback Harness and where it plugs in under the glove compartment. Has 2 twisted pairs of wires providing high level speaker inputs to my Helix V8 for the factory BT (phone calls and navigation), chimes and FM/AM. Then it also have 6 twisted pairs of speaker outputs - 2 twisted pair each to utilize the OEM wiring of front and rear door speakers and 2 additional pair for the tweeters to bypass the OEM crossovers going to the dash corner locations. It also has a 12V feed and ground for something like a LOC or DSP - I just never used the ground as it caused ground loop noise when I tried it out on my old set up. Digital Signal: It was probably to aspect of my built that was going to the most design on the fly but very happy with the outcome. Decided I was going to mount the Topping inside my center console after trying out a few locations and was hoping to retain some access to the device visually and wiring wise but still keep it stealth. Started by drilling holes in the bottom of the console and the console liner. Put some rubber grommets to protect wires: Nice and clean penetration with grommets: Used some VHB, Dual Lock Velco to mount the Topping: Mounted and really like the concealed wiring but easy to get to. Audioquest Pearl Optical and USB A-B cables to a Apple CCK Adapter. Easy to open the console check the sampling rate.

Subwoofer: I had installed the JL Stealthbox as part of my previous builds (aka why you are seeing the JL amp and LCQ-1) but wanted to show a few pics of the fitment and unit itself: Two 12TW3-D8's wired @ 2 ohms and the amp shelf/pocket. Installed under rear seat (Again - from my old install): Seats down:

Then added Soundskins CCF rings to all 4 door speakers: A before and after of the doors: From here, I jumped to my GB15s. Started by getting some 47 uf, 100V caps installed on a small harness to each tweeter: Then got the acrylic mounts butyl taped front and back then got the tweeters mounted in the brackets and added some CCF foam rings: Then dropped the tweeters in the dash and wired them up:

From here, I moved on to getting my speakers mounted in the doors. I worked with Delander to create the custom ABS mounts for the GB60s and GS62s and some acrylic rings for GB15s. The fitment was great, only needed some minor trimming on the GB15 mounts. Here are the mount design and after fabrication (before they were shipped to me): Started with getting the GB60s drilled and tapped on to the mounts before I fit the mount to the door: Didn't take photos of the GS62 prep but same thing. Then I move on to prepping my GB60 wiring. I used the harnesses I got from Crutchfield from my old builds that allow me to plug and play into the OEM harness without splicing: Then finally through bolted the mounts with stainless hardware and lock washers/nuts, CCF taped the opening and mounted the speakers:

Then I moved on to treating the inner shell of the doors with the SoundSkins Pro SSK Door Kit. The paper was a pain to peel but the doors are literally air tight at this point and I am very please with the fit and finish: All 4 doors treated: Nice and clean, air tight opening at the OEM speaker locations: Then I moved on to trimming and cleaning up my inner door plastic panels. I had previously applied some CCF to help with rattles but this time I added from leftover CLD I had to the local surround at each speaker location, trimmed the plastic extrusion to prevent conflicts with my CCF rings and finally tessa taped all my body clips: Panels with CCF and clips tessa taped: I can honestly say, I've yet to hear a rattle in my doors. I can barely hear my tires are highway speeds now, can't imagine what it would be like if I fully treated the doors and rear wall of the truck.

Oh it will be at least 3.5 to 4 years before I trade this one most likely. We tend to cycle our vehicles at 75k or 110k miles. Seems to be our best trade in break points.