It’s not very often I get to write about something turning twenty, let alone a company that started from the humble beginnings of one man’s idea of turning his job/passion of car audio in a life long career. Being ABTEC’s twentieth year in business I thought it was such a great milestone for not only Ashley ‘MAD BASS’ Burrell but for ABTEC as a whole so I just had to write something in celebration! Since Ashley wouldn’t let me use a real photo of him and Darryl I borrowed the one below and ‘adjusted it a touch’. When Ashley started ABTEC in NZ...
As this year has been moving on it feels as the dB Drag Events have been approaching so quickly it hasn’t given everybody the time to test and tune but this could mean that I have finally have gotten old or maybe I just need to pay more attention. The turn out so far has been been quite impressive with a lot of new-comers joining in on the fun, this to me is an important apart of the game & without all these new faces there cannot be growth in the sport! As we turned up to the gates at...
Over the last year ABTEC1 has gone through a few transformations, when I got my grubby hands on it the Pajero it had one DD-9512-D2 facing forward & four DD-SW6.5’s facing the rear door. After that it went through a series of set-ups including four DD-512-D4’s all the way up to running a DD-Z12-D1 & DD-Z18-D1 at different stages. This blog isn’t about the different set-up’s we have run as that would be novel on the product list alone, but about the build of its NEW and final set-up of 4 DD-515-D4’s in a wall. Walling ABTEC1 had been a discussion...
As the dB Drag Season has come back around it was finally time to test the 10″ x 4 Sub-Woofer Box that we got the 150.1dB with the entry level 10″ Sony’s. We had fitted the Digital Designs DD-510-D4 Sub-Woofers almost four to five months prior to this test and had only run them in on light music. From what I could tell they sounded quite good even though they were tuned higher to my personal preference since it is a ‘Burp’ box but in saying that the high tune suits Darryl’s musical taste to a tee. Since we had...
It has been a long time coming that New Zealand would begin to be recognized once again around the world in the arena of dB Drags and SPL competition, That time has come! (“Terminator” 1985 by Wayne Harris {USA}) Over the past few years a die hard, yet small band of people have gathered together to compete for their respective classes, and strive to carve out a name for both themselves and the scene as a whole. While time goes on, faces change, and audio evolves, yet one thing remains, there will always be the “passion for the beast” that is SPL....
After doing the SPL tests with the four Digital Designs DD-512-D4’s it was brought to my attention by Ashley ‘MAD BASS’ Burrell that we have not yet tested two of them for a comparison. This got the brain ticking over and after a long conversation (Ask anyone that knows us, Ashley and I can talk!) with Ashley the decision was made to run with the same design that was netting us results with the four DD-512-D4’s, but this time with only half the box. As I do I setup the car the way I always do before testing, checking and double checking...
As a lot of people are getting to know now, we at ABTEC have been doing a lot of dB SPL Testing using Entry Level Sub-Woofers. We have tried testing Entry Level Sub-Woofers from Sony, JBL, Digital Designs and this time around we decided to try four of the Pioneer TSW-309-D4 Sub-Woofers. Over this time ABTEC3 has been taking a bit of a beating from the Sound Pressure Levels but I’m sure the little Vitz will continue to happily put up with a lot more for quite some time too. I went through my usual check list as I do...
Since we get a lot of questions regarding Car Audio Sound Systems Set-up’s we thought it would be a good idea to put up this basic guideline for you all to read through & also to shed some light on the subject at the same time… Use A Sound level Meter: If you are serious about Car Audio, use, borrow or buy a sound level meter. A sound level meter can save you lots of money in the long run. The reason for using a sound level meter is because once you have your system complete, it may take a big...
Being the end of the year it was time for the ABTEC dB Drag Soundoff & Sounds Alive Grand Final. It had already been an interesting year for the Car-Audio/Sound-Off Scene with people continuing to beat their personal bests and a lot of these people had also been doing some very impressive upgrades to their systems. Which is always good to see since sometimes the smallest of upgrades can make a massive difference. As competitors turned up Darryl fired up the BBQ and as the next hour went on you could tell everyone had a good feed as we were...
Since the last dB Drag Event for the year has just past and we had a slight improvement with our results in ABTEC3 I thought I’d do a little Update… As a lot of you know or maybe not know (I can’t be to sure if this is or isn’t your first time to read my blogs) we at ABTEC have had a little project of getting Entry Level Sub-Woofers into 150+dB SPL range in our Toyota Vitz RS. It started with some Sony 10″ Sub-Woofers, then some JBL 12″ Sub-Woofers but then we ran with the DD-512-D4’s and to...
