We, Keith and Mike, have been friends since school, in 1980. At the time both of us shared an interest in home audio systems, by the time we each started to drive our interests soon turned towards car audio systems.
At the time, 1987, there was very little choice when it came to car audio, the best you could do was to put two speakers with a sub in the middle onto your parcel shelf, this was simply not good enough for us and it meant that ‘loud’ bass was very hard to come by.
In 1989, we tried and tried to get better equipment, but it simply was not available. We knew from our experience with home audio systems that speakers and subwoofers needed an enclosure to work properly. Keith wrote a computer program, using information and formulas we had created for determining the correct enclosure size needed for different levels of bass.
At first the boxes we created we used ourselves, but soon we started to make some for other car hi-fi shops, we built these boxes in Keith’s dad’s garden shed and later on in Mike’s dad’s garage. During our dealings with the hi-fi shops we were selling our boxes to, we noticed that whenever we asked a question, or we asked for advice, the most common response was a puzzled look … they simply did not know!
By 1993 it had become very obvious to us that a good quality hi-fi shop, with staff that knew what they were talking about, was needed. This is when we decided to start our own and K AND M ACOUSTICS was born! The shop’s first location was shared with a mechanic and the premised offered us a fitting bay and very little else. In 1994 we moved to a new unit in Ince, on ‘Moat House Street.’
Later on in 1995 we took over ownership of the adjoining unit and built our first car audio showroom. Inside the showroom we built what was probably the loudest display stand in the country at that time. In the base of the stand alone we had four 15” subwoofers in a folder horn arrangement (usually reserved for large concerts or nightclubs), the bass (and music) that the display outputted was so loud that it used to bend the fluorescent light tubes that we used to illuminate it.
It wasn’t long before we started to talk of doing even crazier things like building a van with even more subs than the display stand. So in 1996 we began construction of the K&M van. Having seen the American import MTX van some years ago, we knew what we needed to do to make something better. The main problem we saw with the MTX van was the fact that it needed mains power for all the subwoofers to work properly, we instantly knew that our van must be able to run off its own power. Also the pressure wave had to be stronger, and we knew how to do it … so we did! We knew we had created something truly spectacular when we began to take the van to shows. We took it to almost every show for the next 5 years, and we won … we put Wigan on the map with our bass! At one show we even beat the Pioneer sponsored van, rumoured to have cost over £60,000 … our van cost a small fraction of that!
On April 27th in the year 2000, we moved to our current premises on Seven Stars Road. The building we purchased had previously been that of a motor home manufacturer, and we changed the layout of the building to better suit our needs. Mike’s dad helped to the lay the brickwork and we did all of the labouring. All of the work was done during December 1999 and April 2000, mostly on evenings and weekends as we were still working at Moat House Street during the day!
These days our products and service are highly sought after and our advice to customers is … ‘do the job right the first time.’ Build up your system in a logical way so that you don’t need to sell something in the future to upgrade a part that is not good enough, buy the good stuff once, it’s cheaper in the long run. A small amount of good equipment sounds great, whereas a car full of bad equipment sounds disgusting. We don’t like to be sad at K&M and when a customer pulls up at the end of the day, after we’ve installed their new system, there is nothing sadder than seeing the disappointed look on their face because they bought parts that weren’t as good as the ones we would of recommended them to buy.
With all the experience we have gained over the years, we have become very good at car audio installations (our staff have been with us through most of our time as well – the newest member of the team having been with us for over eight years!). We have vast working experience of almost every vehicle, from a Robin Reliant all the way up to a Lamborghini (with a few kit cars along the way). If you have a project, want expert advice or simply need some new speakers … please, do the right thing, and come to us for a chat straight away!
