Hi Gang,
I've been meaning to show my Empeg installation for quite some time now, and thought I'd look up some of the photos today and get something posted...I've appreciated all the information from this board over the last couple of years, as I was able to get some good ideas for my own projects...

I have a 2000 toyota Celica, and it came with the stock Toyota CD / cassette player.

Here's a photo of the car...They don't offer too many colors, but it was an easy choice for me (red!)...

Randy

I replaced the stock Toyota stereo pretty quickly right after purchasing the car 5 years ago.

One thing I noticed right away is that it didn't play CD-R discs very well, but I guess they weren't very common back then...

Notice that the Toyota stereo looks like a double-din size, but in reality it was slightly larger in both dimensions. I didn't realize this until I tried to install the Alpine stereo...

Randy

So I was able to get the Alpine stereo installed, but since the car was so new back then and it was the year that Toyota redesigned the Celica, not very many car stereo plastic trim products were on the market yet...

It took a bit of wiring because the Toyota system fed an external amplifier under the glove box, so I had to run some wires from the Alpine stereo over to the glove box to splice into the speaker wires there.

I drove the car for quite some time with the gaps around the stereo as shown...After all, I was able to play CDs and Minidiscs...Life was pretty good, right?

There were some limitations with the loudness that the system could produce without distorting, but for several years I thought it was a speaker limitation...

Randy

So last summer I got tired of carrying CDs and MDs. I had quite a music database going with my Centrals and thought it might be time to get a used Empeg and extend my music collection out to the car.

I knew that I'd need to add an amplifer, and I thought I'd also add a subwoofer in the back (the car is a hatchback). Not only was I looking for a little bit more bass, but I thought that I might get better performance with the rest of the speakers if I sent the lower freqs. to the sub. Maybe that would help with the distortion I was hearing at louder volumes. I thought I'd try and put the amp and the sub together in the back and consolidate some wiring....

I decided to keep the stock Toyota speakers for the time being, since I'd read on some other Toyota boards that it was pretty difficult to replace them. I thought I'd see what they sounded like with the new equipment and then make a decision about replacing them. There are fairly large speakers in the front doors, tweeters on the tops of the front doors, and large speakers on the side by the rear seats.

So I purchased my first Empeg in the late summer of 2004, added two 80GB drives, and started the process of copying music. That took a couple of months, and gave me time to purchase an amp and subwoofer.

I decided on an ADS 6 channel amp (25 Honest Watts per channel with home stereo specs i.e very low distortion at 25 watts), and a 10 inch dual channel MB Quart sub. I looked at sub enclosures and didn't see anything that I liked. I didn't want to lose my precious trunk space, so I thought I'd try and build a cabinet for the sub...

Here's a photo of the sub (before finishing) with the various pieces and hinges. The goal was to make a cabinet that could fit into the car and look built-in while minimizing the space required...The center portion is the actual sealed subwoofer portion, the other pieces to the left and right are just to make it look more built-in and provide a mounting area for the new amplifier...

Randy

Installation weekend!!!!

Or as my wife said, "Oh my God! What happened to your car!"

I took out both of the front seats and the rear bench seat. Then the wiring began...I ran the audio signals down the middle of the console and the power cable for the amplifier down the passenger side under the door trim. Lots of tie wraps, lots of work, soldering wires, using shrink tubing, etc...

And, of course, my wife teased me about being anal when I started using red duct tape (in my red car) to tidy up some wires under the rear seat... Hey, ya use whatcha got!

Randy

Installation weekend went pretty well, no real surprises...It took a bit of time to get the dedicated power wire through the firewall, but I was able to use an existing hole...

Here's a photo of the finished subwoofer, after gluing the carpet in place and mounting the amp and sub...It turns out to be a pretty stealthy installation because of the cover that comes down from the hatchback when the door is closed...And because of the heavy nature of the MDF used to construct the box and the customized "wedgie fit" into the back space, there are no rattles of any kind...

Randy

Finally, the finished product in the dash....Since the car is now getting to be 5 years old, I was able to get the plastic trim kit with a pocket below. The remote sits in there very nice...

And, of course, it goes without saying, I should have done this years ago. The freedom of choosing music far outweighs the setup I had before with CDs and MDs everywhere...

The best surprise of all, once I got everything up and running...The distortion I had heard from my previous system was a limitation in the Alpine amplifier. It dawned on me when I removed the Alpine and saw how puny the power wire was; it had to be something like 18 gauge wire!

Anyways, after some tuning, the Empeg worked very well with the ADS amp and the subwoofer really makes the whole installation sound much better....

A success!!!


Future projects:

* I'm seriously contemplating getting some of the new lit buttons and the lighting kit to round off my installation....

* Sine we've had some warm weather, I'm concerned about the Empeg getting too hot in the dash. I'm thinking of investigating some sort of tap into the A/C system hose behind the dash and having a small tube feeding the cage where the Empeg sits to help cool it off....Any suggestions for that?

* As my music collections gets larger, perhaps a memory upgrade will help out as well...

Thanks, Randy

Beautiful! Congratulations!

I'd add to your list a bliack sled, so that the chromed part don't show on empeg sides.