Drummer and band leader Mick Fleetwood hasn't slowed down a bit, literally and figuratively. His BMW 750IL and his band are a testament to that. When he's not planning projects or touring, he cruises in his brilliant ride with a sound system as classy as the German manufacturer of his vehicle. Speaking of touring: look for his band, a little project called Fleetwood Mac, to hit the road once again after the release of the new studio album due out in spring of 2003.When Mick needed an upgrade on his sound system for the plush 750, he turned to long-time friend Gary Kovner of Kove Audio. It was the latter who decided that the car should maintain its factory integrity. That would add a degree of difficulty to the installation, but Tony Branco, director for Kove, was hardly deterred - after all, he would be choosing the components and designing the system while the actual blood and sweat would come from Kevin Wright of Audio Illusions. Kevin had the unenviable task of implementing Tony's design while going around the OEM source integrated with the navigation system. He very carefully removed it from the vehicle and had it modified to low line levels, right from within the unit. Tony characterizes the process as "difficult and tricky." That may be understating it a bit. Once that was done Kevin Dynamatted the front and rear doors, as well as the trunk and quarter panels.
While the factory head unit remained, there was certainly something that could be done with the signal. That's where the HART EQ4 would come in handy. This unit provides fine tuning as well as separate control of front, rear, and sub levels. After Mick gets the signal just the way he wants it, the music gets pumped up via three Kove ZX500 amplifiers. These are mounted into an amp rack in the back of the sub enclosure. Two of the amps take care of the front and rear components, running at 4 ohms stereo. That's 100 watts x 2. The third ZX500 supplies 300 watts mono to the subwoofer. Total system wattage weighs in at a respectable 1000 at 4 ohms.The front stage belongs to the EP 601 Euro pro component. It consists of a 6-1/2" mid driver with a 1-1/4" mounting depth, a 1" silk tweeter and a custom passive crossover utilizing a 12dB Bessel network design. MDF and fiberglass were used to better fit the front speakers for imaging and overall sound quality. With Mick, the system is not about the hype but purity of sound. As a drummer, he may be into deep thumping low frequencies, but his higher priority is the whole sonic spectrum that a song represents. Rounding out the speaker configuration in the passenger compartment is the KC 610, which needed no modification and was installed in the factory locations.