430 speaker and stereo upgrade and scuderia audio testimonial

Good day all,

It's a long read, so at the top here I want to just give a quick shout out to Mike from scuderia audio @SoftwareDrone, he was so incredibly helpful, spent so much time educating me and ultimately I now have a fantastic setup thanks to him and have actually learned a thing or two along the way, as well as installing an entire system with no prior experience. wow.

So it all started when I read the ad for the F430 which I have acquired, and saw that it had the HIFI option, I was pretty excited. I am a huge fan of excellent audio and love having the right song on when cruising in various situations. I mean a Ferrari with a HIFI stereo, that has to be good, right?

WRONG! I get the car, and it sounded like an old transistor radio. Shocking. There was no sound coming out of the rear subwoofer box, I think just the tweeters were producing sound. So, I moved on to the myriad other things I had planned for the car figuring, I will eventually get to the sound system.
So that day comes. I had purchased a Joying Head unit (not knowing what I was getting myself into) as I am a huge fan of Android Auto.

https://www.ferrarichat.com/forum/posts/148714572/

OK, I remove the stereo, see that I have an upgraded amp, the wiring is some combination of OEM and non-OEM (apparently the door mids were upgraded as well), I have never done this before and I'm thinking, OK, guess I'm gonna have to find a place to do this for me and I actually called and emailed a couple local places (who did not call back).

Mike @SoftwareDrone (Scuderia Audio) has such rave reviews, I figure, let me just give him a call and see what happens, boy am I glad I did.

So I text him out of the blue, he calls me right back. I just want to highlight, he was in between multi-day travel and a doctor's appointment, had 1 hour free, and decided to spend it helping me, a total novice, troubleshooting my system. With the whole system on the floor in pieces, in that hour, he diagnosed the rear sub issue (there was a loose wire to the amp) and I got that online.

Once that was figured out, we moved on to the head unit and he walked me through getting that all sorted, how to test and wire it up, and now that is working beautifully. It all worked for a glorious 10-15 mins, then sadly, during the maiden voyage, the sub started making a horrible slapping sound and that is ALL it did (very annoying). I opened it to find the speakers in pieces.

I chose to upgrade the sub and tweeters to something better than what was in there, particularly since I had a very decent amp upgrade and door speakers upgraded, already.

Looking at my various options, I decided to go with the 8" subwoofer and custom enclosure (if you are a DIY'er, this video is just awesome) and the build quality is unparalleled. Everything Mike produces is absolutely beautiful and absolutely perfect.



I also decided to get the directional Carbon Fiber tweeters, definitely wanted directional sound and just thought the CF was just gorgeous, they are like jewels.

Mike continued to assist me through the installation on everything from how to wire it up to doing the install, of which he also has an excellent video. His videos are a treasure chest for audio.


BEFORE, barely usable Alpine deck, no rear sub sound, transistor radio level quality.

NOW, Touchscreen head unit, phenomenal speakers and it sounds simply luminous. The sound is crisp, full, luscious, tight, punchy and they are absolutely beautiful upgrades to the interior. The Cuoio leather is perfect and a dead on match.
I am still working on my seats, so the interior is not fully assembled, but here are some pics in the meantime.



Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login Image Unavailable, Please Login

 

Just looked and this is the only pic I see, basically the aftermarket sleeve (came with the Joying unit) has bendable tabs on it. Once bent in toward the center, and the radio slides in, the tabs grab onto slots on the unit. To remove it, you insert a thin, flat tool to push the tabs back

In the 2nd to last pic, it has a sleeve, maybe there is one that pioneer sells?

https://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/Car/NEX/DMH-WT7600NEX

Image Unavailable, Please Login