Custom Autosound

In the garage with me today is Ryan McDonald from Custom Autosound. How you doing, Ryan? Great, Dennis. Man, you know, Custom Autosound has been putting modern, state-of-the-art tunes in classic cars for quite some time. Since 1977.

That's quite some time. And, you know, back in the day, one of the first things you did, 'cause the radios and the stereos and stuff were terrible, and so what you did was you went out and you got yourself a good after market unit, and you chopped up the dash, and you stuck that thing in there, and you went: "Nice, huh?" And later you went: "What was I thinking?" Why'd I cut my dash? Why'd I cut my dash? Because these cars are worth something now and that big hole is a problem. Absolutely.

But you guys a long time ago said you know, we can fix that. And so you made all these great units that fit right into the stock opening, but you don't ever have to hack the dash. Correct. So you started out with the USA-1, I think was the first unit you guys did, back in the day, and that's what this baby is, here, right? That's our AM/FM 200 Watt with a cassette player.

And, these things all, not only do they fit the stock opening, but you have faceplates that fit the car they belong with. This is a '55 Chev. So you put it in there, nobody's the wiser. But you keep evolving. So then you came up with, what, this is the 230, right?

That's correct. That's our USA-230 model. That's an AM/FM. It has auxiliary. It's also a 200 Watt unit.

And that's a faceplate, I think it's a '59 Ford. Very nice. But this is the latest greatest, in your head units. This is the 630? That's correct, Dennis.

That's our USA-630. It boasts 300 Watts. Wow, packed into that? Packed into that. Mass.

You could run a USB flash drive, it's got iPod integration, you could run a CD changer, CD player, you have AM/FM obviously, and dual-illumination. Wow. So you can pick between green and blue lit. Whatever you like, right? Absolutely.

And this is a face plate, I think it's a Camaro? '67, '68. But you guys have applications for..? 400 applications. That's quite a few.

We cover a few cars. So in cars, trucks, just an awful lot, an awful lot of vehicles. Absolutely. But let's say you've got a straight rod, where, you know, that could be anything. Or you've got some really weird car that has, you know, a dash that you just couldn't even come up with a faceplate for.

And you came up with the secret audio, some time ago. That's what this unit is over here, this black box. You could put it anywhere. Didn't have to see it. You used to have a faceplate, if you wanted one, you could put it, flush mount it, you could flip, flip mount, but that's even gone.

You don't even have that. This is just the black box. You control everything now through this, this remote here, right? That's correct. It's RF modulated.

Like you said, we are constantly evolving our products. With this, what we've done is we've illuminated the control unit, and we've integrated the display into the remote control itself. And since it's RF, I can put this anywhere. Anywhere. Trunk, glove box, under the seat.

I can. In fact, that will actually work up to forty feet away from the... Wow. Got long range. And what, this is, I guess, the antenna for it?

That's correct. Stash that someplace. And of course it's, you know, it's charged with your cigarette lighter, whatever. Now you've got a couple boxes I don't recognize, I haven't seen before. This is a new little unit, what?

This is our single slim-CD. This is for when guys don't want to have to change out CDs. So what we did is we came up with this is a single motor, you can mount it either underneath the dash, you can mount it in the glove box, or even... So instead of loading up the trunk, I got this CD, I want to hear it, boom. This is all, this is all well and good.

Very cool stuff. But this! This is what I've been dying to get to. What is this baby? This is "The System." "The System." "The System." With The System, what we have here is an 8-inch subwoofer, it's 150 Watts, it's a powered subwoofer, with two satellite speakers.

Those are, those speakers, those look like AC or something. They're designed to look like AC vents, they are chrome, you can take them apart, so if you want to paint to match your interior, you can do that. These are 110 Watt each, and they can be mounted basically anywhere in the vehicle. Nice! Now and, 150 Watt powered subwoofer, and it can accept any of the custom Autosound head units or basically any?

Any system that you're running, this is compatible with through speaker wire or RCA cables. Man, and this goes under the seat, or? It's designed to go underneath the seat, anywhere discrete. Subwoofers are non-directional, so it doesn't matter. Perfect.

And the satellites. So now I've got thoroughly modern tunes. Exactly. You've got modern sound in your classic car.