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The Quest: The Ultimate Stereo Four ogres walk into one of the stores, like Good Guys, and immediately we are presented with the aura of killer stereo equipment. Big screen TVs, laserdisc players, cd-changers, and 1000 watt surround sound stereo systems. This is almost as good as hearing a car light up when they are launching off at an intersection. We would always have to go to the car stereo subwoofer room and find out what combination of stereo, amp, sub woofers, and deep bass music would be able to make our eyeballs vibrate. One thing I learned is that if it is loud enough, your eyeballs will always vibrate. When I think about the times we went to these home and car theatre stores I can remember that the sales people never really sought us out. Of course that can be attributed to our group and the fact that it was probably pitifully obvious that none of us had any money. But Matt was out to prove them wrong. At age 18 he got a credit card. Getting your first credit card unleashes a new type of purchasing power. Little did he know that it would make him a servant for the next few years. One day I showed up at Matt's house and he had something to show off, his new stereo system. It was a Kenwood cassette player with separate bass and treble knobs and CD-changer controls. He complemented that with 4-way Pioneer 6x9s in the back and a 9 disc CD-changer in the trunk! Now that was amazing. He had it all and the best part was that it was in his car! Now it sounded good. We could listen to anything we wanted with ultimate clarity. Of course something was missing, the deep bass. This was my chance to make up for that. My second stereo system would pack bass, I was determined. I bought a 300 watt pyramid 2 channel amplifier (OK I knew this was generic at the time, but come on it is only bass. Do you really need a killer amp?). Then I got the kicker comp 10" sub woofers. Matt and I set out making a speaker box for my hatchback 1976 Toyota Celica. My car was a beater but it had bass. I think the bass actually contributed to extra wear on the car though. Anyway, with dual 10" subwoofers in the back playing anything from Sir Mix-A-lot to Beastie Boys I was thumping and I liked it. Inside the car you not only heard, the music, you FELT it. The only frustration was that there was so much bass, the metal fins that covered the hatch-back window would rattle. Well us guys would go cruisin' in my car at times (usually when Matt's Mustang was broke down). One time Matt and I drove up to his old town of Mariposa. This is a small community and it seemed like they haven't caught up with the times. We drove through that one main street in down town thumpin' along and boy did we get the attention. I am sure all the dudes there were totally into it and everyone was looking at us. It was cool to be the only one in a whole town with a killer sound system. Well I had deep bass for the next 3 years and Matt still has his going today. My system rocked for me until my car died right when I finished my last year of Junior College. My car is gone but I still have my subwoofers in my garage. The bass will someday live again! |