Kip Grossman is no stranger to the world of high-end car stereo. The 38-year-old banking executive and resident of Laguna Beach, California owned his own shop-Sound Odyssey in Northridge, California-from 1981 to 1986, and, since that time, the self-professed car fanatic has had over a dozen sound systems installed in as many vehicles. So he definitely knows firsthand how a good system enhances the driving experience. Even so, Grossman was still reluctant to add a custom system to his latest automotive infatuation, a bright-red 1998 Ferrari F355 Spider convertible. "I didn't even want to do a stereo in the car," Grossman demurs. "As bad as the stock stereo was-and it was really bad; you couldn't even hear it while driving with the top down-I just felt like I didn't even want to go thee. I really enjoy driving the car," he affirms, "but I was just concerned about having any work done to it. Anything you modify in this car will really devalue it." To some ironclad assurances, and that's where Isaac Goren and Sounds Good Stereo & Security enter the picture.

NO NEW HOLES

Grossman said his mind was reluctantly made up concerning his Ferrari's sound-system embargo until he showed the car to his old friend and business associate Isaac Goren, the owner of Sounds Good Stereo & Security in Woodland Hills, California. Back in the mid-to-late '80s, Goren and Grossman promoted the legendary Sound Quake sound-offs together, a series of crank-'em up events credited with helping to kick-start the whole car-stereo competition craze. "Of course, I totally trust Isaac," Grossman intimates." "He's done probably 15 different systems for me overall. I've ha, like, five different Mustangs; he did on in a '95 Saleen, and another in a '91 Mustang convertible." Goren also outfitted a '97 Suburban and '93 Ford 4x4 F-250 pickup that his friend once owned, in addition to a '98 Jaguar XJS convertible Grossman now garages in addition to the Ferrari. "Isaac was really excited about doing a system in the Ferrari," Grossman relates. "So, based upon my relationship with him, I decided to go ahead. The criteria I gave him," hi intones, "was that there would be absolutely no cutting - there were to be no new holes - and that is had to look completely stock." System design and component selection were Goren's call. "I pretty left it in his hands," confirms Grossman. "The idea was to keep the cost down and not go crazy. He's really fair and he always works well with me. It wasn't so much that I didn't want to spend the money," he reasons. "I just wanted to keep it simple."

MIDNIGHT DRIVE

Before the actual installation began, the first thing Goren did was drive the Ferrari from Laguna Beach to Woodland Hills (roughly 85 miles) with the top down to get an idea of the amount of noise the system would have to do battle with in the topless two-seater. "Kip wanted me to get a feeling for what I'd have to do to overcome the road noise, exhaust noise, and wind noise.," Goren recounts. "The biggest concern was performance with the top down, since he drives that way most of the time. Obviously, if he gets caught in bad weather, he leaves it up, but it's very rare that he has to do that." A midnight drive in a Ferrari F355 convertible on a crisp fall night? Hmm…Sounds like a rough job, right? Well, in this instance, fantasy was much better than cold reality. "I was rushing to get back home, knowing we may get rain. It was about 11:30 at night, and I had just gotten in the car," Goren relates. "I started with the top down and I listened mostly to his CD's. I also had one of my own CDs. But then I couldn't figure out how to close the roof," Goren grins, "and I didn't know how to turn the heater on either. I pushed every button I could think of. There was a big button between the seats that says STOP, and I found out later that it was the button that turns the heater on. But, at that time, I was afraid to push a button that says STOP while going 75 mph on the freeway! All I had on was a long-sleeve shirt, and I was freezing," he shudders. The real torture, however, was driving such a cool car and having to listen to such a lame stock system. Let's see how Goren remedied that.

HEAD & FOUR

The Sony XR-F20 cassette radio that came with the Ferrari wasn't the problem-the stock system's lack of power was. So Goren decided not to chop the head. "That was my recommendation in order to keep the cost down. If I'd replaced the head unit," he reasons, "I would've limited myself budget-wise as to the quality of the amps and speakers. Leaving the head alone helped keep the factory look intact. Also, it was lucky for us that the radio happened to have front, rear, and subwoofer outputs. Because Kip listens to a wide variety of music, we wanted to be able to control the sub volume through the head unit. "When I was driving the car," continues Goren, "I noticed the 10 CDs he had in the changer-he listens to rap, old rock, new rock, jazz, reggae, you name it. He also had a prerecorded tape in the tape deck. So when I switched between the three different sources-CD, tape, and tuner-I noticed a tremendous difference in the bass reproduction. By having a bass control on the radio, I knew he'd be able to change [bass levels] as he changed sources." Goren also settled on leaving in the stock Sony CDX-F20 CD changer, which is mounted behind a stock panel in the front trunk. ( In Grossman's Ferrari, the engine is under the rear hood.)

Goren replaced the stock speakers, although he made sure they dropped into the factory locations without modifications to the vehicle. He used KEF KAR AudioM-160S component-speaker package, which consists of a pair of 6 ½ -inch midranges and two 1-inch tweeters. The mids went into the factory-speaker locations at the bottom-front corner of the doors, while the tweets fit in the stock cutout at each end of the dash. "We had to trim 1/16th of an inch in order for the door speakers to fit properly," Goren details. "So we had a choice-either trim the door or trim the speaker. We ground the speaker frames down, and even drilled extra mounting holes so that they lined up with the factory screw holes." The metal interior skin of each door was lined Scosche Accumat sound-deadening material before the door panels were reinstalled. "The door panel has carpet on the bottom portion that goes over the speaker grille," Goren points out. "It's a breathable type of carpet. We just left that as is." The stock tweeters were stationed at each end of the wraparound dash behind a factory grille. "We removed the grille, and the factory tweeter was on a stock bracket," Goren elaborates. "We took out the tweeter and made our own metal bracket that attaches to the original bracket. It holds the KEF tweeter at an angle so that it fires toward the passenger and driver's ears.

BOLT-ON SUB BOX

One problem: There wasn't a stock location to work with for the pair of JL Audio 8W1 8-inch subwoofers that Goren planned to install. Instead, he found room for the subs and their enclosure behind the seats. "Right between the two seats," he details, "was a shelf, and on the shelf was a little compartment. There were three bolts in the back of the compartment holding it to the back wall of the interior. So we removed the compartment and used those bolts to mount the subwoofer box." The sealed box is made out of ½-inch and ¾-inch medium-density fiberboard (MDF), perforated aluminum, and fiberglass, and has an internal volume of 0.657 cubic feet. " We made the main part of the enclosure out of MDF, and the areas that were curved we shaped with perfed aluminum," Goren reveals. "The we put on coats and coats of fiberglass to build it up. When it was all done, we covered it with carpet from Ferrari.

"Once we completed the subwoofer enclosure, and before the subs were installed in it," he continues, "we mounted the subwoofer enclosure using the stock bolts for the factory compartment and bolted it in the exact spot the compartment was in. Then we put the subs in. If you were going to remove the box," he instructs, "you'd take one of the subs out, undo the three bolts, and then you could remove the entire enclosure. We also put a quick disconnect on the speaker wires in case a mechanic has to in there to work on, say, the convertible top." When the stock cover for the convertible tops snaps in place, it hides the sub box, and Goren claims it has no adverse effect on the subs' output.

THE HOLE TRUTH

The rest of the system is installed in more of a highlighted fashion in the Ferrari's front trunk. It houses an Eclipse 3242 amplifier (50 watts x 4 at 4 ohms) and the passive crossovers for the KEF component speakers, all mounted on a carpeted MDF panel attached to the front trunk wall. "We made a U-shaped panel out of ¾-inch MDF, with special angles to fir the factory curves," Goren says. The crossover and amp are attached to the MDF panel instead of the car itself. "There were two factory bolts on the front trunk wall, details Goren. "So we drilled holes in the amp rack that line up exactly with those bolts and used them to mount the rack. All you have to do is remove the amplifier to remove those two bolts and take out the whole panel."

Installed out of sight with the CD changer is a Micro HPC circuit breaker. It has a manual reset, which, Goren believes, is absolutely a key feature. "If Kip takes the car to a mechanic, for example, he can push the little red button on the circuit breaker. That way, they can't operate the sound system. There was no good area to mount the circuit breaker," Goren adds, "so we siliconed it close to the CD changer."

STREET SMART

Once the system was complete, it was time to take the car back out on the street to see is Goren reached his goal of designing a system that could play accurately over the roar of open road. "We spent a lot of time testing it in the shop," he recalls, "but after taking it out on the road, we did some major adjustments, I needed to bring the volume much higher; the amp gains weren't high enough. But once I turned the amp gains higher, I noticed the mid range speakers were bottoming out. So we changed the crossover settings on the amplifier; we had to bring the crossover point for the mids higher."

Speaking of crossover points, here's the rest of the signal-path info: After the signal leaves the head unit, it's amplified by the Eclipse amp and crossed over by the amp's built-in crossover. Frequencies 80 Hz and down, rolled off at 12 dB per octave, go to the subs, while the signal bound for the KEF component speakers' passive crossovers starts rolling off below 90 Hz at 12 dB per octave. The KEF tweeters, rolled off at 18 dB per octave, and 3,500 Hz and down to the mids, tolled off at 12 dB per octave. Channels 3 and 4 off the amp are bridged mono to power the subwoofers. They're wired in parallel so those channels run at a 2-ohm load and supply the subs with approximately 300 watts total. Channels 1 and 2 each drive a mid-tweet pair, and each driver gets 50 watts.

COMMANDING PERFORMANCE

All of the power, signal, and speaker cables used in the system are EFX by Scosche, as are the RCA's and connectors. The system took approximately 5 days to install, and, by Goren's calculations, it cost a little over $4,200 for the equipment, materials, and installation. Sounds Good head installer Thomas Orozco performed the install. "Fortunately, Kip had a lot of trust in us," Goren summarizes. "He loves music and he knows from experience that you can get very good sound in a convertible."

And what about Grossman, who originally had second thoughts about installing a system in the first place? Any regrets? "I had very, very low expectations of what it was going to sound like." He admits. ""I've seen people spend $5,000 or $10,000 on systems in Ferraris, and they got very, very little performance; in fact, they didn't sound much better that the stock system. That my system ended up sounding as good as it does makes me very pleased. The fact that I can hear it with the top down is a pleasure. And, of course, the quality of the installation is incredible." Just think-Grossman could still be stuck driving around with lame-o stock system if he hadn't shown a little faith in Goren and his crew. What a terrible waste of a perfectly good Ferrari that would've been.