"NOT ALPINE, BUT I DON'T LIKE ALPINE"
That was my response
when Ed told me that one of New Zealand's 'best sounding' car stereos was
only running product from that company. "Trust me,
you will be very impressed," he reassured me as he sent me on my way down
to the Mainland. "Yeah right, we'll see!"
So off I went with an awful lot of pessimism on board and a bucket load of arrogance. The odds were stacked against this machine right from the start. Upon arriving in the freezing cold (thanks Matt) (you're very welcome - Ed) I made my way to Chris's work to see if I could finally be persuaded into liking an Alpine system. The workshop at Installer Services is well laid out and looks very professional. The sort of place that you would feel quite happy to leave your prized pos-session behind.
Chris was busy putting the finishing touches to a customer's car, so I made my way to the waiting area where I meditated over a cuppa. Sitting in there with me were some very excited customers come to pick up their car - I had to wonder if it was an Alpine sys-tem that had been installed.
BACK IN BUSINESS
Time to get down to business. Chris had Finished the car he was working on and landed it over to yet more happy customers then showed me out to the car park. first impressions of the '92 Toyota Levin ST were "Wow, that is an excellent paint job!" Secondly, "where on earth is the stereo!!?" At first glance everything looks absolutely stock standard inside. A closer look starts to reveal that things aren't quite as they seem. A quick glance down at your feet and you begin to sense the magnitude of this install.
STEPPING UP
But
first things first. Let's take a look at the machine that Chris chose to
transport this outrageous musical en-semble. He had a budget in mind and
went looking for a car he could build ; the stereo he had 1 planned, unlike
most I people who have the car already and then decide to build up the audio.
After eliminating several options, Chris decided that the Levin was his
weapon of choice to take on the big guns in the CANZE I National Sound I
Off. This is of course not the perfect car to use but there aren't to many
- people out there who would spend $100,000 plus on a BMW or Mere then pull
it apart to stick a stereo in it.
POWER? NAH.
Modifying the Levin is not high on Chris's list of priorities so the internals of the two litre twin cam are as they left the factory. The air filter and exhaust are ex-factory to help the donk breathe. To add the finish-ing touches he threw a set of OZ Racing wheels at it (can't be without decent wheels - Ed).
Now I wanted to be convinced that an Al-pine system could actually sound as Amazing as Ed had hyped it. Okay, to be fair, it's not everything that has come out of the Al-pine that I don't like, it's primarily the tweeters. Sure I've heard some Al-pine systems that were al-right, but nothing that actually left a lasting im-pression. I personally have found the sound from Al-pine's tweeters too harsh. Of course, this could have a lot to do with the way the owners prefer to have their systems sounding, so I gave Chris a CD that I had brought with me and asked if he could put it on. To make it more unfair on the Alpine system, I had just been listening to this CD though $70,000 worth of Gen41657 studio monitors!
TEST TIME
I had to ask Chris
to put the ! CD in himself because I couldn't find where to put it. A quick
flick of the wrist and suddenly 
the
car started to transform into a , high tech audio monster. The centre air
vents turned out to be covers that fold back and out comes a CVA-1000E monitor/commander.
And for all those extreme audiophiles, no this unit is not silver as it
would of left the Alpine factory. It has been painstakingly stripped down,
re-painted and re-screenprinted to match the cosmetics of the interior.
This is the kind of attention to detail that makes me think I might be in
for a surprise when it came time to listen
MOTORHEAD
Chris then opened up the customized centre console revealing a CHA-5609 shuttle with an outboard digital/analogue converter, all of which has had cosmetic surgery done on it to tie in with the interior. So in went my CD and I prepare myself to listen. Reaching out to the CVA-1000E I turned up the volume, selected the CD, the track and finally pushed play. It took me as long as it would take Ed to loose his licence if you gave him the keys to an f40 to withdraw all my statements trashing Alpine.
TOLD YA SO
