Product rebranding and markup

dynamo

Kind of depressing when one realizes how overpriced audio gear, especially car audio, can be.. I have a recently rekindled interest in car audio lately and was seeing what is good nowayads and stumbled across this:

https://www.arcaudio.com/store?p=97217

https://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com/sb-acoustics-woofers-6-7/sb-acoustics-sb17nrxc35-4-6.5-woofer/

i hope their their marketing person is well paid being able to peddle a $120 pair of drivers for a mere $579/pr. Geez

D1PP1N

Those stickers must have been really expensive and the guy that removed the old ones and applied the new ones must make good money! 

Tom_S

That's ridiculous! At least NVX isn't going completely bonkers with their markup. https://www.nvx.com/xsp65-6-1-2-x-series-mid-bass-drivers/ I think it's interesting that neither ARC or NVX list the T/S parameters. Do most guys into car audio know about Madisound? I know quite a few have used the Silver Flute 6.5".

Tom_S

Should have shown this link - https://www.nvx.com/xsp65-6-1-2-x-series-mid-bass-drivers/

dynamo

Sometimes people just need that fancy brand name. Unfortunately back when I was in high school that was me. Scary how much I likely overpaid to have brand names.

Several years ago I got a good deal on a set of overstock car audio components from madisound that consisted of decent vifa drivers, still labeled as vifa. They were supposed to be relabeled and boxed as Nakamichi. Came with a decent little Nakamichi branded passive crossover. Of course now I would just buy raw drivers but that was my first step away from thinking I needed big name stuff.

PWRRYD

I just think of all the stamped steel basket, poly cone, JL Audio subwoofers I installed for myself and my friends...  not realizing that those +$100 10's were no better than a PE $25 GRS 10".

jr@mac

That is pretty much nail on the head, Craig. 

Wolf

...and most into car-audio thought they were the best back then.

I said- stamped frame, foam surround and a generic poly cone with an ugly logo- no thanks.

dynamo

Yeah, I was in the brand name camp but I guess it was fun though having “cool” (I.e. overpriced) gear. My wife and I recently picked up an old car and I still have a lot of my old car audio gear, so I plan to do a nice install. A blast from the past of the good old car audio days I guess. Even though I overpaid at least I held on to a good handful of my old stuff and got a lot of use out of it over the last 15 years. Maybe when I do the install I’ll take some pics and post it up in the car audio section.

This kinda makes me want to do something funny someday out of spite to people charging $500 for a pair of SB drivers - like a crazy awesome install with fiberglass, plexi, leds, the works..with all GRS drivers and a big GRS logo on the back window!

Tom_S

I'll confess that I had a JL 12" sub in a JL box in the back of my Explorer 25 years ago. I bought it used and now looking back, I still paid too much for how it actually performed. One of my friends worked at a car audio shop and his 8" JBL in a tiny sealed cube put my JL shame.

dynamo

It’s not all bad, I still have a 10w3v3 that I picked up used a while back that is actually a pretty musical sub. I had some Image Dynamics IDQ15s for several years that were phenomenal for such a plain Jane looking sub. I feel like the offering of really decent subs from companies like Dayton, etc for very reasonable prices has really increased from 15 years ago though too. The price to performance ratio of the ultimax and rss lines is great. I still see value in a good quality head unit and amps, but buy used to take away the unreasonable price aspect. 

PWRRYD

I had some Image Dynamic 6.5" midbasses in the front doors of my Grand Cherokee.  Awesome drivers and I don't remember getting layed out for them costwise.

dynamo

PWRRYD said:

I had some Image Dynamic 6.5" midbasses in the front doors of my Grand Cherokee.  Awesome drivers and I don't remember getting layed out for them costwise.

I agree, they were probably some of the better cost to performance drivers out there. The original IDQ and IDQ v2 drivers were nothing short of awesome, especially for looking so meek. The gear I have I plan to put in our Camaro (Sorry Craig!  ) is ID. Years ago I popped a spider on my IDQ 15 after a lot of abuse with a solid 500w per driver and that was about it for damage, which ID repaired. I later ordered a custom set of IDQ 12s, where I spec’d longer throw spider/surround, woven leads, and compression terminals. They looked great and were as I requested, but I could never get them to play low, which is the IDQ bread and butter. Once I got a limp jig I measured them and for some reason the suspension changes yielded a really high Qts. I blame myself for requesting changes to a good driver (but I have the only set on the planet at least!). I threw them aside, but they should be perfect for this car since I just want to seal the cabin to trunk with a baffle board (semi OB, or at least big leaky sealed. The suspension has decent capacity and the FS is around 20hz.

PWRRYD

I like Camaros, Vettes, and pretty much anything Chevy, Buick, Olds, Pontiac, Ford, AMC, etc.  Just can't stand those shit box Dodges.  Their owners are so delusional about them 

Wolf

AMC- that was a company with great cars! I'll keep my Dodge, and you can have your FoundOnRoadDead or ShoveItOrLeaveItLay. Really though, my Magnum has been a great car.

jhollander

I grew up on chevy's, but it was the only new car to die on me in the middle of the road.  Then the dodge mini van croaked on my wife in the middle of the road.  Most car stereo mods were Kenwood, JBL, Jensen, and Kicker subs.  Now I'm just to lazy mod the car stereo.

dynamo

jhollander said:

Now I'm just to lazy mod the car stereo.

I agree, it is a hassle. The only reason I’m kind of looking forward to this install is because I want it to be (tastefully) custom. 

dynamo

Also it’s getting harder and harder to integrate into the vehicle with new vehicles. You will spend more on integration modules than your speakers. Plus you’re kind of stuck with the factory head unit and it’s mediocre sound quality, bass limiting with volume, etc, because if you’re like me you’re not going to pull your 7+ inch factory touchscreen with all its connectivity features to put a single din CD player in with a black plastic pocket kit.. On top of all that, I’d have to assume vehicle manufacturers could deny certain warranty claims with modifications to the radio system with everything in the vehicle being more and more integrated with data busses, etc. Lastly you have to hope your integration modules work. I had a Grand Prix a while back and installed an iPod integration module that used the GM data bus. It was speced to work with the car but, on top of its truly poor sound quality thought the module, the vehicle gauges would randomly all drop to zero and all stability systems, abs, etc would all throw lights and failure messages while driving. Needless to say the module was removed. That’s why most of my stereo stuff has been in totes waiting for an older vehicle.

jr@mac

It goes back quite a ways, I had to install a black box to fool my '04 Alero into.thinking the factory deck was still there. It would cause periodic episodes of killing the entire vehicle. Nada, zip, zilch. Not so much as a flicker of power. I learned I had to pull the fuse for the radio when this happened. Then it would be fine for anywhere from one day to several months. 

When I put the Delco back in, I never had another issue.

dynamo

That’s crazy. The Grand Prix I had the above integration issues with was an 04 as well. Fortunately this car is a 68, so no databus there!