hm let me see, good brands. alpine, pioneer, eclipse, clarion, blaukpunkt, etc. i prefer the alipine and pioneer. i love my stuff. but the clarion stuff is pretty cool and i hear eclipse stuff is awesome as well as some blaunkpunkt stuff.

 

hey i am not the author. i just replied. what the heck. oh well.smile

 

Well i would carry most of the brands and just give your opinion on what you thought was good product. That way you can appeal to the most customers and the most budgets of teenagers and young people. I plan on opening up a store when im older, out of college. And i plan on selling most everything from performance upgrades, to rims, to system. Its gonna be an all around kick *** type store for your car I just need a name..

 

preference for what? amps, subs, components.. theres not a single company thats "the best"

 

well..I was the actual poster....but it didnt get my text apparently.....I am going to open my own store and I was just wondering what everyone's preferences for brands on all aspects of audio was. Subs, amps, the works....thanks

 

Subs: Adire, JL, Image Dynamics.
Amps: Arc Audio, Lunar, JL, Kicker to name a few.
Speakers: JL, Focal, Dynaudio, Rainbow (might as well exclude these)
Head units: Pioneer (Premier), Alpine, Denon, Nak


Extremely brief list. Thing is, you can carry just about any brands, just have some lower end stuff for the people who don't want to have to spend much and a lot of mid-to-high range, and very little high-end. When dealing with the mid-high and even high-end brands don't matter as far as quality, they are all excellent. It just comes down to preferences on look, power, features etc.

 

what type of installs do you plan on doing. are you going to be doing high-end stuff or mostly installing new hu's and speakers with an amp and sub in a square wood box or are you going to be reglassing cars with competition grade installs?

 

It's important to have a wide range of stuff so that you can hit all markets. You'll find that your bread and butter is the deck-and-four crowd, which is not going to be interrested in the high end stuff. You'll sell far more Pioneer coaxials than you will sell Boston components.

So... make sure you pick a line or two that has low-end stuff, like Pioneer and JVC. Eclipse and Alpine don't really have any cd decks under $200. You should also investigate the reliability of the brands you're interrested in. Nak and Denon have a fine reputation, but when you have a pissed off customer that's had his $1500 Denon R1 in for warranty work 3 times, it's going to reflect poorly on you for selling it to him in the first place. I'd also stay away from Sony for the same reason. The new Xplod stuff is all crap, at least in their low end models, which is what you'll sell the most of.

When it comes to speakers & subs, it can't hurt to have a few decent brands as long as you have enough board space to display them all. Again, you're still going to sell more cheap stuff than high end stuff, but I've found that talking somebody up from an $80 pair of Pioneer coaxes to a $100 pair of Bostons is pretty damn easy because of the difference in sound. We sold more Boston components than any other brand. Also make sure you have one horrible sounding pair of speakers in the board. You wouldn't believe how many pairs of Bostons I sold thanks to the Xplod speakers we had in the board.

When it comes to amps, you can get away with less brands, and with less models on display. As long as you've got a couple cheap ones to audition, and a couple good ones, you can sell the whole line. Trying to demonstrate the differences between a Punch 360 and a Punch 500 in a sound booth is futile, so there's no reason to have them both there.

That's about all that I can think of right now.

 

MCSS i have to strongly disagree w/you on that one

Subs: Eclipse, Xtant, JL (W7's are insane)
Amps: Eclipse, Xtant, Rockford, MTX
Speakers: Eclipse, MB Quart
Head Units: Eclipse (most powerful on the market) JVC, Kenwood.

I've seen/heard just about all brands i have mentioned here. Eclipse and xtant are pricey, but in my opinion the best. MB Quart makes killer speakers, especially their components. For quality of a HU, i love my eclipse, but the jvc and kenwood are also good quality at an affordible price. Just my $.02 tho

 

I have an eclipse head unit and it rocks!! Very Clean and powerful. I'm planning on getting 2 Eclipse titanium 12" subs, and maybe one or two US amps. US amps makes very good amplifiers!!

 

i hear memphis amps are nice

and dont forget your frequent buyer discount

 

For subs and amps I like MTX - loud and deep.

I also like crossfire amps and subs. fosgate makes a decemt amp but their subs are @$$.

For cd players I won't get anything other than a blaupunkt.

for components I like vegas and bostons.

and for cheapos Jensen is best.

They are right though most of your busness is gonna be cheap stuff.

 

like jim so clearly articulated, it doesnt make too much of a difference what nice components are. you really have to stock for the market you have, because you do have a bottom line to worry about. i think jim nailed it for you.

 

I don't. The brands he mentioned are very high-end brands that just don't have the commercialized following that the mainstream crap does. The result is a product that represents a fantastic value and can still easily be compared in quality to some of the better known "high end" stuff.

The Adire Brahma and the W7 are two VERY similar subs in terms of sound quality and SPL capabilities. The IDMax is a very close contender too. Eclipse and Xtant subs don't compare.

The Adire Revos, Rainbows, dynaudio and others are some of the best sounding components available at any price. The focals, although very pricey for what you get, are also phenominal sounding. Quart makes some incredible sounding speakers as well, but I don't consider anything from Eclipse to be as high-end as the other stuff mentioned here.

My point is... everybody has different opinions on what may sound best, but you shouldn't be so quick to dismiss the brands that MCSS has listed. Most of that stuff is at the very least in the same ballpark as the stuff you listed, and in the eyes of a great many people, far superior. Although stuff like the Nak and Denon decks have terrible reliability and are not a brand that I would personally promote, it is still by all means considered a very high-end product with a fantastic sound quality.

 

Hey jim's 85 iroc...i wasnt necessarily dismissing them, i was just disagreeing with him. Had a feeling this was gonna happen..anytime anyone disagree's with anything on these boards people get cranky..i was just simply stating i disagree and have a different opinion..nothing more nothing less..take it for what it is

 

another line up for amps: jbl. they are extremely great bang-for-buck amps. anyone lookin for a high power sub amp thats tough and will take a beating on a low budget will buy these. every audio board i've ever been on has recommended these. plus they are within the target market's (high school to college) budget, so they should sell very well.

 

I guess we're just fighting over the choice in wording. My point is that it's very different to "add to the list" than to "disagree" with the list. The stuff he listed is very much high-end stuff. Obviously others will have different favorites.

 

Well I am an alpine man myself. That is all I have ever had, and I always get nothing but compliments!!

 

The only brands I will buy anymore are Cerwin-Vega, Memphis, Blaupunkt, Clarion, JL, JBL, and possibly Infinity. Too many bad experiences with other stuff.

 

Jims, i can agree w/that...it never hurts to carry a wide variety of brands and qualities so you can appeal to every customer

 

Thanks to all of you for your input. I will take into account all the advice. Thanks.

 

well i love the alpine head units,and i think for a nice amp i go with the MATTS amp not to expensive and load as hell, now my subs i went with Kicker Solo-Baric L7's i geuss im a solo fan but they pound