I'd grown up in a home with two parents that always had music on. Mom played whatever was convenient - typically FM radio out of a console. Dad had a HiFi set-up in his office, which was later moved to the basement when we moved. Dad listened to stuff like Tom Waits, Led Zeppelin, Grover Washington Jr., etc. As I grew older, I was allowed to use dad's stereo to make tapes of my records, etc. so I had an early appreciation for audio.
In 1985, my life changed. Dad had dropped off one of his Cerwin Vega R24 speakers to be re-coned at this little hole in the wall called The Stereo Clinic in Joplin, MO. I went with him. Proprietor Tom Wheeler was a interesting guy to say the least. They sold car audio, mostly used home audio, and did speaker re-coning and serviced both home and car audio out of a converted house on 20th Street. My teen years had been spent gawking at the car stereo displays in Otasco, Western Auto, and Wal-Mart. I kind of thought I knew what I wanted for my first car system when I turned 16 . . . until I met Tom. I asked Tom a few questions and Tom was just downright rude to me - you don't even know what a subwoofer IS! You need an amp to power one. When we left, I was really put off. I thought he was an asshole. My dad was like - well, he knows what he's talking about so when we go back to pick up the speaker maybe you should ask him to let you listen to the stereo in his car. Good plan.
To my surprise, Tom agreed to let me hear the system in his car when we returned. Tom had this little POS Honda CVCC that used to be red but the paint was all faded. We hop in it and he's got these Marantz 6x9s mounted in the rear side panels over the rear seats that immediately caught my eye. He's like - those aren't even hooked up, just listen. [Incidentally, this was the first and last time I would ever see a pair of Marantz car speakers.] So, he pops in a TDK SA tape with ZZ Topp Eliminator on it (Jensen cassette deck) and fast forwards to song 4 (I'm cueing this up on my office system as I type this), I Need You Tonight. First listen for me. The intro sounded nice and then . . . OMG . . . the bass kicked in and I about shit my pants. That system moved so much air in that little car - I just couldn't believe it. Tom was running a pair of Acoustic Research 6x9" speakers in an enclosure that they custom built in the hatch. It had a 12" woofer cone pointing towards the rear used as a passive radiator. A 65w per channel power amp was mounted under the passenger seat and that ran the 6x9s. It was like nothing I had ever heard in my life. Not only did that car rock, but I could feel the bass! I was 15. All the way home, my dad thought I was crazy. He didn't even understand what I was trying to explain to him. He didn't sit in the CVCC . . . he should have!
I turned 16 a few months later and got my first car a few months after that. My dad gave me a Pioneer KP-7500 out of his Camaro for the car. I took the only $250 I had left after buying the car, getting it tuned up, etc. to Tom and gave it to him (my dad about lost it). Tom set me up with a used Clarion EQA500 EQ, a used JVC 50wpc power amplifier, and a pair of brand new Pioneer TSA-6907 4-way 6x9s to complement the Pioneer I already had. This was 1985. I could play Van Halen so loud that you could hear me a quarter mile before I showed up. Over the next several years, I tried and tried and tried to replicate how I Need You Tonight sounded in that CVCC to no avail. I tried 6x9s from Cerwin Vega (CS18A), Pyle Driver (6940D), JVC, AFS Kricket, Jensen Quadaxes, etc. I built a similar box under the rear deck with a 12" passive. Eventually, Tom was like - dude, try the ARs. I did and never looked back. That was the winning combo, although I couldn't quite get the same sound Tom had as he had a hatchback and I had a sedan but it was close.
Throughout high school, I was known as the car stereo guy. Everyone wanted me to hook up their system and I had lots of cars in my parents driveway. This led to a career in the car audio industry that lasted 2 decades. [Home audio became a hobby in 1990]. Eventually, that took me all the way to becoming a Regional Sales Manager with this little company known as Rockford Fosgate. All because Tom Wheeler let me hear the system in his car. I never forgot it.