Beware BeastBoxes’ Badass Boomer

Approximately a million years ago, I drove a 340 Volvo. I would brag about how insanely good it was at holding onto the limit of corners as it had a perfect weight distribution. It was for safety reasons, making it hard to spin out, so I could harry a Ferrari up on the raised section of the M40 out of London and would scare my brave chum Billy with the sweeping bends at 90mph. Now, I am fully vindicated by seeing their use extensively at the Pure Carma King of the Ring drifting events at Arena Essex. There’s even a pisstake ‘prancing Elk’ logo on the badge of some of them, a parody of the Ferrari prancing horse logo.
How I adored that car! It was also the one that I cut a boot-floor shaped piece of plywood for and proceeded to stick stuff on it. A strip of brass for a buss bar to Earth with a large two-part woven metal strap and two evil crocodile jawed clips that nested together to make the whole board with amplifiers removable. The other half of the strap was fixed in with the boot lock bolt. It also featured quick release 1/0 rubber armoured Cam-Lok connectors, which I have never seen anyone else ever use before or since. It’s what three phase is connected to travelling P.A. rigs with to plug it all in at venues! The thing was, though, that I had so little cash and could just not afford a flash posh install like the superhero types. I begged Kevin O’Byrne on Car Stereo & Security magazine to feature it but he wasn’t keen. It was two pairs of six by nines and a subwoofer in a fibre shelf held up by bits of two by two.
And since then, I have seen, heard, felt and written features on what have been the very best installs in the world. And I know why Fast Forward magazine turned me down.
Chris Brown’s creations for Alpine of America. The two-year Euro Champion Audi A4 from Finland. All the cars Mark Turner ever did. Awesome vans from Rockford Fosgate, the MTX dual Jackhammer pickup made by Magic Mike But I still have love for Aladdin. I still adore the memory of that first system and how it excited me.
Yes, we love a Street Rat. A diamond in the rough. And this is exactly that.
Ian Wynn and his Golf

I know it’ll cause irritation amongst those who have poured blood, relationships (Hi Ian!) tears and sweat into making fabulous feature-worthy installs such as Project Little White and many SQ EMMA cars but as part of a new resolution to get at a LOT more car reviews, (as I suspect folks still desire to see their rides made famous) this Golf, with it’s ‘Orrible Matt Black finish and bonkers pure-offensive sound system is worthy of your attention.
NOT an ‘aspirational’ feature, so much as ‘bloody hell, I could afford to DO that madness!’ sort of thing, this car was installed by a clever dude who designs bass boxes to fit into cars that actually take into account all the stuff you need to, Thiele-Small parameter-wise. He is a stalwart dealer of the distributors PPA, who bring in a collection of really cool brands like Precision Power, Soundstream and Cerwin-Vega and can supply the most awesome ear-candy install if you have the urge and wherewithal, from such brands as Morel, DLS, HAT and DC Audio subs and Sundown amps. ‘Yes, we have everything from cheap, through to stupidly expensive!’ Ian happily admitted. The Golf was about affordability and impressing in the dark at a cruise, just nine days from when they started painting the car!

To start with, the system has NO headunit of any kind. It simply has an auxiliary socket on the half-DIN EQ/subwoofer crossover unit at the front of the car. Our man Ian, who was DJ Uplift on Talk Audio for some time, isn’t too bothered unless he can mess with the tunes, so uses just his phone music collection in the system via its 3.5mm jack socket! The Soundstream MPQ-7B half DIN unit features a bass crossover with a bass volume knob and seven bands of fixed EQ at 40Hz, 100Hz, 275Hz, 700Hz, 2kHz, 5kHz and 14kHz.
The EQ

This feeds tunes to the back. The bass goes to an Atomic AT 3000.1D monoblock amplifier and it is this that drives the £40 cheapie Crunch subwoofers. Cheap does not preclude brutal. They may overhang and woofle a bit but they are stitched-cone designs and MADE for driving hard. With the mad clamshell enclosure in the back of this Golf that Ian built, the bass really goes hard and heavy. Right into the point where I start to wuss out at the sheer visceral beating your innards get at the 150-odd dB mark and lower than 40Hz. These are the Crunch Powerzone P1-12D4 dual voice coil driver and I reckon deserve some more attention from the likes of the Propper Droppers fraternity.
The BASS

The mids and highs in the doors alone are a combination of a slew of coaxes and some savagely cruel-loud bullets and linen edged midband P.A. style drivers in bloody great door-applied pods. They are as subtle as a flying mallet and fiercely loud.
Bulletty

The bullets are called Crunch ‘Screamers’ which sounds appropriate and are but £50 each. Not bad for such evil drivers. There are two per door. Below them are a pair of coaxes. They are the £20 a pair Crunch CRS4.0 CX. In a row below them are the four metal penises that are the phase plugs in the eight inch midband P.A. style Crunch CRSS 8.4 drivers. These really provide that midband spank and impact. They cost £70 each and one pair will raise Cain in your car. Ian runs four pairs. The amps are Crunch Ground Pounders and are a GPV 3500.2 (£240-worth) and a GPV 1200.4 (£170 worth). The big two channeler is driving the mids and the four channel amp runs the coaxes and Screamers.

The cabling is solid but would win no install points for the likes of the posh EMMA guys but the dB Draggers and the PD lads will love it. We took it up the local lovers’ snoggy/doggy car park and after a few snaps and a short video clip, Ian let it rip. It took my intestines a few moments to realise what was going on. It was not as sweet and smooth as say the madder Hertz big buck wagons and the likes of Edd Elson’s mega sexy Ground Zero Audi but it took flap all time to fit, cost very little for what it does and clearly gives the owner a lot of pleasure and that’s not something to argue about.


Yes, it’s rough as pig in some places but almost as soon as the video went up, I had a comment offered that said, ‘I LOVE BUDGET BUILDS. Though the car had a LOT of stuff in it Those stitched subs look really nice ‘ which pretty much sums it all up!

Here’s a lovely slideshow gallery of the shoot.
gallery
And here is the BeastBoxes’ retail site: link
HOT NEWS: In checking the above for accuracy, Ian has told Talk Audio that they are now the UK source for the bonkers Italian-made SPL line called SP Audio. They make a 15 inch that takes six kilowatts! Check them out here: link they will be on the selling site above, soon.