<VV> Radio Report

[Tim Verthein]

Well, here's the review.
If you've followed along, I needed tunes in my 64 Monza.
The original radio housing removed easily with three bolts. This after
removing the stock radio of course, which is also easy.  The original
speaker was also a piece o' cake to remove.

I purchased a dual dash speaker from a Corvair Vendor.  At least a
couple of them sell them.  They are from Custom Auto Sound and you can
also get them direct from them.  This speaker is actually two speakers
in one rectangular frame that mounts under the dash where the original
speaker went. Dual..so you hook one up for left and right (although
there's no real stereo imaging with them so close together).  There's a
thick cushey gasket that goes on top of the speaker assembly to cushion
it against the dash. I had no trouble mounting it to the original
Corvair bracket mounting hole under the dash.  Took a bit of bending of
the supplied bracket to get it nice and snug, but easy.

After putting the original radio and housing away safely in case I need
it someday (in other words..the housing is my the kitchen pantry, the
radio is in a box of junk in the basement), I mounted a $15 dollar
underdash module from my local car stereo emporium.  This was easy as
well, required drilling holes under the dash, but no biggie.  I even
went so far as to find all matching screws to mount it with, instead of
just whatever was laying around. Slid into it the AM/FM CD player that
survived my daughters Hyundai....it's an inexpensive Pioneer from
Wal-Mart I believe.  Hooked up left to left, right to right, power to
the original radio power lead, plugged in the antenna.  Also..had to
run a second power lead..as these fancy schmancy radios require one
source of juice that is always on to maintain the memory in the radio
settings, etc....so I got that from the lighter terminal on the fuse
box.  All in all, it looks nifty.

I must say, it sounds about 500% better than I expected it to.  I was
anticipating putting more speakers in back, even had some ideas
formulated, but I don't think I'll need to.  I figured this speaker
unit would sound tinny...and possibly even muffled, since the speaker
opening in a Corvair is rather small compared to the speakers
themselves, but it sounds DAMN good.  I got the ones rated for 80
watts, and this radio is suppose to pump out 50, and I'm getting
blasted pretty good without even cranking it up.  So I can highly
recommend the dual underdash speaker as sounding very decent indeed. 
So far, my musical tests have been the Guess Who, Janis Joplin, and Ray
Charles CD's, and local FM radio.  All sounds wonderful. The true test
will be with some jazz, but since the car is rather noisey anyway, I'll
lose a lot of the dynamic range to car noise I suppose. 

AM reception sucks big time.  Lots of stray noises, static, clicking,
etc.. all I'm sure generated by the running car.  I shall alleviate
these shortly.  But....overall I'm very pleased....amazed even.

i'll mention that I spent4 hours doing this, about 38% of that time was
spent looking for things...like the right size drill bit, the black
tape, etc.. Oh..and it was snowing here, and 34 degrees.  When it
wasn't snowing it was raining.  I'm 6' 2" and 283 pounds.  I was not
meant to fit under the dash of a Corvair.  I worked all afternoon with
my legs in the driveway getting snowed on.  No wonder I have the
sniffles today!  And now I'm gonna put one of these speaker units in my
Edsel....to replace the original 1958 stock speaker (the Websters
definition of tinny shows this speaker). Which gets it's sound from a
20 year old AM/AM cassette deck, bolted to the bottom of the under dash
ash tray (easily removeable..just slide it out).

Tim

"You can make the mountains sing....or make the angels cry"
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