Conversion 1
Audio systems like these are my favorite. High quality, straight forward, quick turnaround with a great result. This client originally stopped by the shop and listened to a recent GT3 audio system we completed. He quickly realized what he was missing in his G Wagon with Burmester.
We utilized a 3 way set of Focal Kevlar for our front stage. The midrange and tweeter were moved and fabricated to be housed in the a pillars. Sitting in the vehicle, the first thing from a design perspective are the air vents. I thought it would be clever to utilize this design around my midrange speaker. I modeled a to scale size of the vent and cut it out of acrylic. I then heat bent the spikes inward to mimic the OE air vents. For the tweeter, I created a Burmester like grille to match the OE styling. The pillars were finished off with some more acrylic trim and matching Alcantara suede. The midbass woofers were installed in the factory location in the lower front doors. Sound Shield was used as an acoustic treatment to deaden the door metal. We retained the OE rear speakers. Each speaker is powered and runs fully active off a JL Audio VXi800/8 DSP Amplifier. This amplifier uses a EQ’d preamp output which goes to a single XD600/1. This amplifier is responsible for powering a JL Audio 13TW5 which resides in a custom down firing subwoofer enclosure.
Our subwoofer enclosure was made of cabinet grade baltic birch. A false floor cover was made and heat bent from PVC Sintra and wrapped in Alcantara suede to stealth the box into the floor. The center insert uses OE matching carpet. This enclosure uses two M8 bolts to hold down the enclosure in two OE bolt points (under carpet cover). I retained the four tie downs and trimmed them into the top of the enclosure. A backlit sill logo was made to tie in the front door sill design. The Musaic logo centers the piece while being surrounded by a lit Burmester circle pattern.
A amp rack was made and bolts in place of the OE Subwoofer. This holds our NAV-TV ZEN-M Interface, system fusing, JL VXI and JL XD amplifiers. The Nav-TV ZEN interface is the brains behind integrating into the OE Radio system. This goes to the first initial preset of the JL VXI. Our second preset is for our Mosconi AMAS 96K, and the third uses an analog input from an Astell & Kern SP2000.
