Hammer Your Brains Out
A mighty frighteningly heavy bass install with two 22 inch weapons-grade subs. Adam Rayner went to SEMA with Pioneer and met the MTX dual-JackHammered Caddy Escalade pickup truck that has been doing the show rounds all year and has emerged unscathed..
While Talk Audio is a site dedicated to all things mobile electronics rather than being cars, girls, tuning and bling like Dub magazine (that’s more yer Ballers’ and Rappers’ culture innit?) we simply cannot ignore the whole cars and girls culture. So, as soon as I clapped eyes on the trio of nubile young things in skimpy clothes that I met inside the North hall of the Las Vegas Convention Centre at SEMA at the end of November, I begged for a snap of them.
As regular readers will know, they were all Mitek promo lasses, which means the BBG brands of MTX, StreetWires and also the Coustic stuff that BBG don’t import. As soon as the girls learned that there were 90,000 of you at the figurative other end of the nice new TA camera, they couldn’t wait to do their posey thing, the loves. They turned around and their outfits were deliciously more skimpy from behind. What little cloth covered their pert arses had the legend ‘MAD’ across one and ‘MIKE’ across the other.
Now I was excited and finding that the man himself was on the Mitek stand, promptly lost all sense of cool respect and just acted like a total fan. I met him and Xzibit at the CES in previous years but back then was still so locked into big-audio DVD playback rather than broadcast that we hadn’t gone past terrestrial TV in my house and thus had never checked out Pimp My Ride. I love it to bits and can even cope with the UK version although I will take the merciless **** forever out of the lovely bloke that is Jamie Shaw for wearing his hair the way he seemed to have been told by the PMR directorial crew. Pinky, the lass on the UK PMR is definitely a candidate for a legends and babes thing
Anyway, there was this huge great Cadillac Escalade pick up truck stood on the MTX stand and it transpired that this was possibly the first really full on MTX Jackhammer installation in the world.
It costs the same $10,000 to fit a hand built carbon fibre coned, 22 inch JackHammer subwoofer as it does to buy one and Mitek have used two. The vehicle has two discrete power systems as one runs at too high a voltage for the regular electronics to cope with. The truck’s own alternator, a 150Ampere job is driving just the ECU and associated vehicle electronics. A totally separate bank of four 250Ampere alternators (300A peak output) are arrayed around the engine and run at 20Volts, which the mad grade prototype MTX amps can not just eat but use to churn huge power into the subwoofers, strapped in pairs. Each whopping great alternator has its own isolation switch and you can clearly see that the float voltage on the poor abused 16V batteries in the bed is just over 19V DC. Just beefing up the car’s electrical system alone is the biggest part of the job. There is a custom decal under the bonnet to show just how convoluted a path the poor old mega rubber band has to go in order to drive al the power this system needs.
It was played to me for a short while and although it was only run up to a quarter volume the sheer power and energy coursing through my body when I was nearly inside the vehicle was just terrifyingly brilliant.
It took you and grasped you by the id, shaking your foundations, even your beliefs as you really cannot believe this much pulverising energy is coursing through your carcass like it wasn’t there. And when you have a carcass my size that really shakes you. I gather that it was dropping proper street bass tones and yet was being restrained at ‘only’ being allowed to throb some 154dB as they were in a hall. The sound of a system with the power and might to sound unstressed at an incredible 154dB of proper deep lows was something that gave me a new benchmark for effortless bass energy. You could de-bone a mammoth with one of these, or at least break pavements with a different kind of JackHammer. I tried to have sex with the one of these I first saw at CES on a golf cart and wrote up the PMR car that had one in that couldn’t possibly have really dropped but this may just be the most extreme professional car electronics installation in the world right now. Not the out and out loudest maybe (that’s all mono tones and mad numbers) but in terms of sheer jaw-dropping awesome, this Escalade is the Utter Bollocks.
Here’s a somewhat American flavoured (or is that flavored?) run-down of all the doings in the beast. The workmanship is of course world class and the dudes who perpetrated this sin against silence are gifted and for ever to be blessed for helping such a plain insane thing come into being.
Respect to MTX.
MTX AUDIO JACKHAMMER ESCALADE EXT
MTX installers Jason Planck and Craig Marsh completed the build in 6 weeks in the Mitek Show Vehicle Operations facility in Monroe, WI.
VEHICLE
Year: 2002 Make: Cadillac Model: Escalade EXT
Paint colour: custom two tone cranberry and black with marbleised silver stripe
By whom: Jared Pulver of JP Customs in Monroe, WI
General modifications: SSBC brake kit with MTX logo custom machined into the calipers
ENGINE
Engine (size): 6.0 litre Vortec
Modifications: custom air intake with K&N filter, Corsa Performance cat back exhaust
SUSPENSION INFORMATION
Wheels/Size: 27 inch Lexani Magnum wheels
Tires/Size: 27 inch Nitto
BODY INFORMATION
Modifications to body: Lexani body kit, E&G Classics grille, custom paint, custom tonneau cover, custom rear bumper trim
INTERIOR
Modifications to interior: custom suede and leather upholstery, custom suede dash, custom suede and painted fibreglass center console
AUDIO
Source Unit: DriveSoft system with custom installed 10 inch touch screen in the dash. Also acts as Multimedia/Navigation System and video switching unit
Preamplifier: Alpine RUX-C701
Front speakers and locations
Two three-way MTX TXC component systems were installed into each front door with an extra TXC.1 tweeter added to both systems. (two TXC5.1 and two TXC6.0, plus one TXC.1)
Rear Speakers and locations
Two three-way MTX TXC component systems were installed into each rear door. (two TXC5.1 and two TXC6.0)
Subwoofers: Two 22 inch MTX JackHammer T9922-22 subwoofers were installed in a custom made ported enclosure constructed of aluminum. The enclosure features polished aluminum port trim and two Plexiglas viewing windows. As a midbass enclosure to complement the two JackHammer subwoofers, a fibreglass enclosure mounted inside the rear window is supported by a custom steel structure. This enclosure houses four 10-inch T8510-04 Thunder8500 subwoofers.
Amplification: Four prototype Thunder Elite amplifiers power the two JackHammer subwoofers (One pair strapped together per subwoofer). Three prototype Thunder Elite amps are powering all TXC speakers in the doors. One prototype Thunder Elite amp is powering the Thunder8500 10 inch midbass woofers. All the amps are mounted on two different custom amp racks that replace the rear seat.
System total wattage: 17,200 watts @ 4 Ohms.
Monitor types and locations: Drivesoft 10 inch touch screen built into the dash, 7 inch Drivesoft touch screen mounted in the tail gate, two 7 inch screens mounted in the trim panels on the sides of the bed, 7 inch screen mounted in the back of the center console.
Security
AudioVox Prestige 9800 with remote start
The vehicle was completely stripped to apply sheets of Hushmat sound deadening material to the entire interior.
StreetWires SuperCable and UltraCable lines of 16 gauge, 14 gauge, 12 gauge, and 8 gauge StreetWires UltraFlow power cables were used as speaker wire for the JackHammer subwoofers.
Over 50 pieces of aluminum and stainless steel were incorporated in the design
StreetWires ZN9 series RCA interconnects were used throughout
Power/Ground: Two hundred-plus feet of StreetWires 1/0 AWG Ultra Flow Power Cable (red and silver) were used.
Alternators: Four Powermaster 250 Amp High Output chrome alternators were installed on a custom bracket. Custom cnc’d billet covers were made for the electrical system diagnostic centers under the hood where these High Output alternators can be controlled.
Batteries by Powermaster 16 Volt
Distribution blocks, fuse holders, fuse values and locations: Fourteen StreetWires 1/0 gauge ANL fuse holders in rear (FHX0ANL); Four StreetWires 1/0 gauge ANL fuse holders under the hood (FHX0ANL); Four StreetWires 1/0 gauge ANL fuse holders under the lower amp rack (FHX0ANL); Four StreetWires DBR30s; Two StreetWires DBR448; Eight StreetWires fused battery terminals (BC4PF);Eight StreetWires negative battery terminals (BT2N)
Special thanks to: Lexani, Varad, Hushmat, JP Customs, Stainless Steel Brakes Corporation, Drivesoft, Powermaster, Coy Hudnell, Corsa Performance Exhaust, Kevin Ross, Jason Schubert.
Adam Rayner and Talk Audio would like to thank Pioneer for taking him to SEMA to get this story. You Rock, Dudes.
And here is the gallery of shots taken at the time….
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