GREAT [car stereo] news for 458/488 (Scuderia Audio)

Kudos to baby tooth doctor who helped me to source some unobtainium electrical connectors.

I am now making harnesses that allows any 458 with the JBL premium system or any 488 with the base system to completely bypass the stock amplifier and add an aftermarket amplifier without cutting a single wire.
In fact, this is even easier than my Speciale/Pista harness. With that harness, you still need to run a power wire to the battery, a ground wire to the chassis and an amp turn on wire to the fuse box.
This new 458/488 harness includes everything. Simply unplug your factory harness from the stock amp, plug that same plug into my new harness, and plug that other end of the harness into the aftermarket DSP amp. Done! There is an additional attached cable (blue/white) if you want to add a subwoofer.
It takes me several hours to make one harness, but it's the simplest install ever and completely reversible.

I'll be making another YouTube video demonstrating this harness as part of a DIY, 100% plug and play system.
I'll keep you guys posted.

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Thanks guys. I just spent half the night dialing in a custom DSP tune file (458 Spider) for Ferrari of Austin.

For the low end, I couldn't manually dial it in any better than the industry standard Butterworth crossover slopes. ZZ Top sounds freaking awesome!!


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I'm going to make a new YouTube video for this this weekend. As a demonstration, I'm going to disconnect the stock amplifier, then hook up the new amplifier, blindfolded, to show how easy it is. I did it a couple of times last night just goofing around.

 

Within an hour of my original post I had 4 people pinging me with bags of money LOL. It is very gratifying when you spend tons of time, money and effort to get something absolutely perfect, then release it into an environment full of people who are bright enough to recognize the effort.

 

This is absolutely not intended to sound like an upsell, but it's not just the harness that makes this system so great. It's the fact that it connects to an amplifier that you can mount above your battery in like 10 minutes. No more installing an amp in the front trunk, drilling holes, hacking up the harnesses, taking the front of the car apart, running long wires halfway through the car, etc. And with the integrated DSP, well... I had over $15,000.00 of car audio gear in my own car (2000 Ferrari Modena) and I didn't think it could sound any better. Then I bought a standalone DSP and installed it. After a few hours of tuning, I got the system to sound ten times better.

 

I am actually working on my YouTube video today. I also just received enough connectors to manufacture 4 of these new 100% plug and play harnesses. I'll be working on these all weekend.

 

Cog, I feel bad that I still haven't found anyone who is willing to help me by sending me a JL Audio tune file for the 458 (or any tune file). I promised to create a custom tune file right when the next person ordered a JL Audio DSP amplifier. The trouble is, ever since I came out with this new amp that mounts above the battery, not a single person has purchased the amp that mounts in the trunk. I mean it's a complete no brainer. I literally cannot keep up with the stealth amp/shelf product orders. And now that I have a harness that is 100% plug and play, I am now absolutely buried with orders.
Stacking two amplifiers on top of one another is not going to help. If I were in your shoes and fortunate enough to have a 458 with a DSP amp, I would either sit in my car for a couple of hours with the free DSP software and work with it to come up with the perfect DSP tune, or I would pay someone at a high end car audio installation shop to tune it for me.
If you ever decide to remove the JL Audio amp, sell it on fleaBay and install one of my DSP amp/shelf systems, of course you'd get a great tune file from me because I was able to sit here for hours and create one (since I have the gear).

 

As an aside, I am still working with baby tooth doctor in an attempt to finally source some connectors that would work with an Italia or 458 Spider without the JBL option. There may be some Chinese companies that have the connectors that will fit into the NIT. If we can find them, then of course I'll also have a 100% plug and play system that will work for the 458's without the JBL premium system.

 

Tomorrow I will be posting the new product on my website (www.scuderiaaudio.com) for sale. Of course the people who have expressed interest here on Ferrari chat will go to the front of the line.

 

Here is a helpful video:

 

This new product is now on my website. Just look under the corresponding model (i.e. 458, 488).
www.scuderiaaudio.com

 

All you folks who have expressed interest, check your PM's. I have special deals until I run out of my first batch of harnesses. Currently trying to figure out how to get more connectors from somewhere closer than Elbonia.

 

When I was a young man (in the 1980's) I had a Corvette. I designed a custom stereo system for this car. I went out and purchased the most expensive high end head unit, amplifiers and equalizer I could find (a thousand dollar car stereo equalizer - in the 80's!). However, I intentionally bought the cheapest speakers I could get my hands on. Literally, $9 tweeters, $13 midrange speakers and $15 subwoofers. The system sounded absolutely phenomenal!! And that was the point I was trying to make. After of all the marketing hype, a speaker is just a dumb, round thing that moves back and forth how its told to. The key is having a powerful enough amplifier that is smart enough to tell the speakers to move in and out correctly at high volumes. If it cannot do this, the speaker gets confused, produces distortion, and eventually burns out (the voice coil overheats and fails).
Any car audio system (or home audio system) with n watts will always sound better than the same system with m watts where n > m. That's one reason.

If your radio has bass and treble controls, you can sometimes turn up the bass gain and/or the highs gain to make the music sound better (i.e. bass boost). Having an equalizer is even better because instead of having only two controls (one for the bass and one for the highs), you have up to 7 or even 9 controls (low bass, mid bass, high bass, low midrange, midrange, highs, very highs as an example).
Think of a digital signal processor (DSP) as an equalizer on steroids. Instead of 7 or 9 adjustments to the sound, it has 31 adjustments to the sound (commonly called a "third octive" equalizer). Additionally, you can adjust the crossover slopes, phase alignment, time alignment and more.
I had $15,000.00 worth of car audio gear in my 360 and I thought it couldn't sound any better. Then I purchased a standalone DSP and spent a few hours fine tuning the system. It ended up sounding ten times better. That is the other reason.

To recap, a more powerful amplifier, especially one with a built in digital signal processor, will make ANY speakers sound much better.
If you wanted to see this theory for yourself, you wouldn't even need to mount the new amplifier try it. Just do like I did in the video. Unplug your harness from the stock amp, plug your harness into my harness, then plug my harness into the new amp. It could be just sitting there on the floorboard or on your seat (doesn't matter). What you'll hear is a night and day difference in the sound. Any reputable car audio shop will tell you the same story.

 

If both the JL amp and the Mosconi amp had a good tune installed, there would be no difference. If one amp had a good tune and the other amp had a bad tune (or no tune), the amp with the good tune would sound ten times better.

Let me do some research tomorrow and reach out to a few car audio shops in the DC area.