[FG79]

Was having a conversation about this shop the other day....it seemed like original ownership left sometime in the '90s.

What I've heard about the audiophile level installs and tuning from those guys is nothing short of EPIC. If you were an enthusiast ~10-20 years ago and you lived in the mid-atlantic, all you had to do was bring your car there and you were set.

Some of the more famous installs was Paul Newman's 911, and a minivan with the planar speakers for door panels! This was the shop owner's car too, lol.

These days, 99% of the time if you're a really hardcore enthusiast you're bringing your car to the shop just to get stuff put in and then you fine tune it yourself. The definition of a good shop is one that is competent at installing cleanly and without any noise or other electrical issues. Unless you're an amateur or a boomer, you'll most likely be wanting more. I know I certainly have.

Curious if anyone here remembers E.C.A.S.?

 

[OnlyMotorola]

I know this is an old post - but I just found it while I was trying to google them and I thought I would reply.

I was one of the original customers of East Coast Auto Sound - I had a 1977 Datsun 280z 2 seater that they totally modified for me. Those guys were originally located inside Myer Emco when they were located over on Old Georgetown Road next to the Porsche Dealership - and that's where they got their start. When Myer Emco decided they weren't going to do car installs anymore, they opened up their own company and talk about right place, right time, they hit it HUGE in the 80's. I remember they put polk audio tweeters on my a-pillars and soooo improved my sound. Oh I wish I remember the owners names, I can still picture them but the names, Jeff Fleming was one of the owners that I dealt with, but the others just don't come to mind.

So when they branched out on their own, there were located in the newly developed auto park that was near the corner of Snouffer School Rd and Woodfield Rd in Gaithersburg. Then later they moved down down an area off of Parklawn Drive.

They carried Ultra High Fidelity Equipment such as MacIntosh, Nakamichi, Eclipse, Pioneer Pure Digital, Clarion, JL Audio, PPC, Alpine V Series, Scosche.
Jeff never carried low end products, and was extremely picky about what he considered a quality product. His intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the devices and how to tune them to each vehicle was astounding and was always willing to share his knowledge in a laments capacity so that the Joe Blow (as long as he or she had enough dough to shell out) could understand how his or her vehicle was now a custom masterpiece.

When he retired, it was the end of an era.

 

[Halthar]

I just wanted to chime in, even though this post is VERY old. I just found it for the first time while checking to see if ECAS was still around since I'm looking for places at the moment to demo speakers for my next install.

I grew up in the area and spent a bit of time every weekend for a while in there learning. Even the lower priced installs I saw in their bay were top notch. Ended up doing installs as a result. Great place, and some absolutely wonderful installs. Part of the reason my next install is going to be using all old school PPI Art Series amps is because of this place (back then I couldn't pay to play). There was also another shop a bit further from there toward Gaithersburg named, if I recall, "Autosound Systems", just off 355. Picked up my first set of Boston Pro Series components from them in the mid 90s. They, like ECAS, only dealt with high quality equipment, Eclipse, Nakamichi, old school Boston Acoustics, Alpine V12 stuff, etc. I never got a chance to see any of their install work personally, but I heard at the time that it was top notch also. If East Coast didn't have something, they sent me to the other place, and likewise for Autosound Systems.

Unfortunately, it looks as though both places are now gone.