I get alot of emails asking what kind of system do you have to have to compete is SQ. He is my Pro Street and Advanced Pro, 2000 Neon. It's a simple system...

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[ May 30, 2004, 01:53 AM: Message edited by: Westec ]

what does it take to compete and win, time, money, experience and dedication, what does it take to just compete, time and money

My perception of what it takes is a love for sound, cars and pride in your hobby. Hell, I've seen people compete SQ with a factory head unit built up from there AND placed top 3 in their class!

To me, to compete in SQ or SPL, it takes what you have in your system to start and you grow from there... If you like competing, then you improve your system from that point, if you want to.

I believe he was looking for entry to moderate system suggestions as an example that you don't have to fork over major bux [img]smile.gif[/img]

Gear isn't as important as people might think, but you need to be one hell of an installer to pull it off. You could spend up to $2000 on gear, and maybe a few hundred hours of finicky work (which James can do) and have the best system out there. And then just tune it correctly. my car is very flexible, but in the wrong hands, that's just more stuff for an idiot to screw up. :D

The simpliest of systems needed to compete is a pair of compents and a single 10 or 12. Be willing to spend some money on a membership to a SQ organization. List to people who are successful in the SQ area. Not armchair quarterbacks....

INSTALL INSTALL INSTALL.

Anything can sound good with proper install.

Most important peice in my eyes next to a cd player is a crossover. Without a good X-Over what's the point of competing. I know many people will agree with me that Active is the way to...a good 3 way front end is a good way to start as well. Once your front end is rockin ei: your staging is good, width, height and depth, focus on the subbass....DO NOT go into an IASCA SQ show with your subs screaming....IASCA judges usually don't like alot of bass in the music, it should ideally sound like perfect recreation of a concert/recording studio.

Whenever building a budget system, My advise is to spend a great deal of time and research on a CD player/processing and EQ...then scope out a good installer. Or do it yourself.

Remember, don't buy anything on someone else's word that it's good....go listen it it your self and decide...Yea I can tell you that my Clarion DRX9255 is a wicked unit or the 8250Ti and it sounds awesome, but your tastes might be different then mine.

head unit and processing is the least important when getting started. You will get much better results concentrating on speaker positioning and sound than anywhere else for SQ.

What was the first 3 words I wrote? INSTALLx3....then you figure out your deck and stuff like that, I guess if your gonna run in a rookie class you don't need to worry about going active and running a real good processor, but it definatly helps and if the judges like it they may tell you to compete in a more advanced class which to me, would be a big confidence booster.

My first IASCA car is a perfect example as to where people can start. The biggest thing that bugs me, especially in my area is that people automatically think they need the fancy fiberglass install, kick pannels, tricky crossovers, 500 band eq's....ok I am getting carried away but you get my point.

My first IASCA car consisted of a Clarion entry/mid level deck. Can't remember model number, but you old FS'ers will remember it. The grey one with the crosshairs for volume and track. They replaced the all black stuff in the mid 90's. Very basic deck. 1 or 2 sets of pre-outs, thats it.
I think the tweekiest thing in the car was the kicks. We took the time to build a pretty moderate set of kicks. Yes it took us a while, and we learned ALOT along the way, but they sounded pretty good. They were filled with a pair of Infinity Reference 5 1/4 components. If I remember right, those were entry level components as well. I think I has a 1/2 din Clarion eq which was maybe 6 bands.
For amps I was running 2 Blaupunkt V250's. 1 for the components and 1 for the 2 10' MTX Blue Thunder's. Thats it. Over time the low end changed into 1 12" Blue Thunder because I wasn't getting the low end I wanted.
But all in all, I think the system cost maybe $2000. Install included.

My first year competing, it did ok. I think it got a couple 4-6th positions. Not too bad. As long as you go into it as a learning experience, you won't be disapointed. If you go in expecting to win all the time, go play marbles or somthing. Some of the biggest advice I can give is to listen to what the judges are saying and ASK LOTS OF QUESTIONS!!!!! If you don't understand what they are telling you, ASK! Thats why they are there. It is a little intimidating your first year in, but after a couple shows, you get into the swing of things and it gets alot more comfortable.
As you get a little more experience, and if your budget allows, you can start to expand your system. This always doesn't have to mean equipment. Using the same emquipment with different installs can be very exciting. You learn that your gear that you have been listening to for so long can sound so much different given a different install.

Remember, competing is a learning process. You don't get to the top over night (well in rare cases you can but it usually involves lots of money and its not as much fun). But remember its supposed to be fun. As soo as you feel its not fun anymore, stop competing. I think thats where IASCA turned alot of people away in the mid-late 90's. People were way to serious. I mean look at me. I had bright freakin red hair every compition I went to. How serious was I? I was pretty serious. Next question is how much fun I had? I can hoenstly say it some of the best times of my life.