The Great Stereo Catastrophe
Back in October, for Nik’s birthday, I bought some car audio equipment from an online retailer who shall remain nameless, except for the sake of the tale we’ll provide them with the pseudonym “Dutchfield.” At the time the gear I bought, a head unit from Pioneer plus a box to enable Sirius satellite radio and an iPod adapter, was good and available for a good price. HB offered his expertise and copious car-related tools to help get it installed and the end result was quite satisfactory.
It was due to this success that when December rolled around and Christmas loomed that I went back to the retailer to acquire additional components for Nik’s car. In this case she was asking for additional “oomph” to the sound so after doing several days worth of research I felt confident in buying an amplifier and a subwoofer. The amp was a relatively inexpensive model but well-reviewed on the site and the bass speakers came in a box with two ten inch subs. Plenty of bass goodness seemed available and my thought was that eventually the amp could be connected to a new set of aftermarket speakers to complete the package. But speakers can run pretty pricey for a complete set of four (they are almost always sold in pairs and Nik’s Civic has two front door speakers and two rear deck speakers that require upgrading).
The piecemeal approach seemed to fit both my budget and the requirements Nik had for her system.
Initially I thought about imploring HB to help again, but when I researched amp installations a bit it became obvious that installing an amp cleanly often requires either removing parts of the car that I didn’t feel comfortable ripping out or trying to install into places that aren’t terribly convenient. To avoid the hassle and potential damage to the car, I made a few calls to some local car audio installers to get pricing.
The first thing I noticed during these calls was that each person I spoke to asked similar questions—not about the locations of the installed components as was my expectation but much more so about the type and brand of the equipment. Eventually someone said they would take a look at everything but it sounded to them like the amp I had would not work with the subwoofer.
This confused me so I immediately called Dutchfield and asked to speak to one of their product advisors. I spoke to a very nice fellow who evaluated my order and confirmed that yes, what I had was at best unusual and at worst not what I was hoping for. He suggested that two ten inch, powered subwoofers paired with stock speakers powered by nothing but the head unit would result in thundering, window-rattling, richter scale-moving bass… and very little else. He performed a small demonstration of what this might mean.
Dutchfield representative: “So you know how normally a song like ‘Smoke on the Water’ goes: duhn dhun duuuun, duhn duhn da-nuuuhn! Duhn duhn duuuun, duh-nuuuuuhn!”
Me: “Yes.”
Dutchfield representative: “If you put in that sub, it would sound like: Booom. Booom, boooom. Boooom boom buh-booooom!”
Me: “That’s not what I want.”
We spoke for another hour or more debating the relative merits of other equipment options. He was very considerate and patient and in the end I felt more comfortable with my understanding of car stereo components and told him I just needed to check with my wife to confirm what she wanted and I’d contact him directly to set up the order.
When I spoke to Nik, whe was mildly annoyed that the delay meant her stereo would not be ready for a bit longer, but she agreed that the thundering bass-only sound was not what she had in mind. So I arranged to have the subwoofer sent back for a refund and implored Nik to look over some of the aftermarket speaker options the rep had suggested and pick which ones she liked best. The rep had been very specific and said that the Civic had something called component speakers in the front which separate the highs from the rest of the signal with a small secondary cone called a tweeter which sits higher up on the door panel than the rest. Component speakers are pricier than regular speakers and are also more difficult to install since they typically don’t fit the stock tweeter panel holes right out of the box.
The only problem with this was that I couldn’t find the tweeters in the Civic. I know I have them in my truck, I can see them clearly. But I figured they must be hidden in the Civic in some clever Japanese tweeter-camouflage location. My recourse was to simply call the Honda dealership and ask politely where they were hidden in my car.
But sadly the call to Honda introduced more confusion into the mix. When I called them they checked my model number and the available stock parts list again and again, trying to prove that they and I weren’t crazy. To no avail: It turns out that our particular model of Civic does not come with component speakers of any kind. There are certain higher end Civic models that do, but not ours. So I tried to call the rep back with this information to clear the problem up. I got voicemail. I got voicemail a lot. I tried weekly for three or four weeks to get hold of my guy at Dutchfield, but each time I left a message requesting a call back and got nothing. Finally Nik was getting frustrated and demanded that I make some progress on the Christmas present which was now threatening to be more akin to a Valentine’s Day present, so I gave up on the direct extention and called the main number to talk to whomever might answer the phone.
The representative I spoke with indicated that contrary to my operating theory, the earlier guy had not been fired. He, of course, was not working that day, but the new rep would be happy to assist me in any way he could. I calmly explained that something must be wrong with their database because they seemed to think that all Civics had the same type of stock speakers and that was not the case. I also explained that I needed to order some speakers that would work in my car and I needed them sent out pronto.
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