How to Design and Install High-Performance Car Stereo (revised) (S-A Design) [Paperback]

Joe Pettitt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 8, 2004 | Series: S-A Design

If you want to take your car stereo to the next level, How To Design and Install High-Performance Car Stereo shows you what it takes to put together a quality system without wasting time and money on the wrong gear. It also guides you through installing and tuning everything correctly, so you can finally enjoy the high-performance sound you crave. Author Joe Pettitt gives you the how, where, and why for all the head units, amps, crossovers, speakers, subwoofers, and enclosures that work together to form a high-fidelity mobile audio system. You will also learn how to install and tune each of those components to maximize its performance with your particular system. And if you've ever wanted to try custom fabbing your own kick panels, door panels, amp racks, or sub boxes, this book shows you how to do that too.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: S-A Design; 2 edition (April 8, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1884089852
• ISBN-13: 978-1884089855
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #179,317 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #62 in Books > Professional & Technical > Automotive > Mechanics

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This is a darn good book on car audio!, April 16, 2004

By 

Hib Halverson (Southern California) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: How to Design and Install High-Performance Car Stereo (revised) (S-A Design) (Paperback)

In the automotive how-to book market, there aren't a lot of good titles on car stereo. That shortage makes High Performance Car Stereo by Joe Pettitt, which would be a good read even if the market was crowded, an important reference on the subject.

The book's best quality is that it's written by a car audio DIY and is aimed at do-it-yourself car audio enthusiasts. Joe Pettitt is a long-time automotive technical writer who's worked at many of the major performance car and truck magazines and has written for "Autotronics". He is is currently on staff at Sport Truck Magazine.

Another good quality of this book is Author, Pettitt, and Publisher, CarTech Books' S-A Design division, made a conscious decision to leave discussions of basic electrical and audio theory to other titles which better cover those subjects. High-Performance Car Stereo focuses on teaching the intermediate car stereo DIY the technical information he or she needs to upgrade or build-from-scratch most any automotive sound system. Now, this means the reader must bring a fair amount of technical knowledge to the table when reading this book, but that's a good thing as it forces the technically-challenged to other, more basic texts, first.

Regardless of whether you want to just install improved speakers and an EQ in your existing system or add all-new and better equipment just for pleasure or build a totally-killer, mega-power, custom audio masterpiece for IASCA competition, you'll find information in this book. It's got chapters on head units, amps, speakers, EQs and a lot more. Appropriately, the book ends with a chapter profiling two installations: a 92 Chevy pick-up and an 84 Pontiac Firebird. All of this is written in Pettitt's easy-going, sometimes humorous style. While I have a basic knowledge of electronics and audio technology, I was not well-versed in advanced car stereo subjects, so I learned a lot of useful information in reading this book. Before I read it, I knew enough about car audio to be dangerous. When I finished the book, I felt I knew enough to build a pretty decent system. Now, all I need is a bunch of money to do it.

While High-Performance Car Stereo is a really good book, it falls short of being an outstanding one because of problems with graphics and pictures. There are a lot of charts and diagrams in it, few of which are numbered. This is a problem when the text refers to a specific drawing but the reader, who might be learning the subject the first time, cannot tell which drawing is being identified. I was confused by this problem several times. There are places in the book where pictures are published in the wrong orientation. There were a few instances of images not matching captions. A fair amount of the pictures in the last chapter, which could have been the most valuable images in the book, are too small to usefully illustrate the activity or situation the Author intended to show. It would have been better to either use less images or devote more space to that final chapter so the photos could have run larger. The last little quirk of this book was the cover. The largest picture on it shows the interior of a Corvette with a killer sound system installed in place of the stock stereo. Unfortunately, all you get is a picture. There is nothing in the book specific to high-end car audio in Corvettes.

Hopefully, if there's a second edition of High-Performance Car Stereo, it will have an enlarged section on installations along with some material about the Corvette system pictured on the cover. In the meantime, if you're looking to learn about how to understand, select and install high-end car stereo equipment, buy this book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Ok. Book But Not Too Great, May 17, 2006

By 

G. Quiroz "Esco101" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: How to Design and Install High-Performance Car Stereo (revised) (S-A Design) (Paperback)

Wouldn't recommend this book if your a beginner. Some of the explanations that Joe Pettitt gives about car audio are not well described and there's no full detail. I believe by the time you finish reading this book you will have a better understanding about car audio, but I don't believe your understanding will be great enough to begin your own install though. I would recommend The Car Stereo Cookbook by Mark Rumreich over this book.

5.0 out of 5 stars Good tips and explanations, May 15, 2009

By 

Marcio R. Olivei (Sao Paulo, SP Brazil) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: How to Design and Install High-Performance Car Stereo (revised) (S-A Design) (Paperback)

At first glance, the booked looked like a big collection of magazines. But after reading every paragraph, I found a lot of good information and great tips about car sound planning and installation. It also covers how to build some kinds of enclosures and how to sold and connect the wires. Don't recommend this one for beginners, but if you already now something about car sound systems, it is a good book.