An electronics engineer that has worked for the Canadian Space Agency, who is also a leading fabricator, has launched a speaker box company called Last Resort Fabrication.
Bryce Lewis, co-owner of Last Resort Fabrication, Alberta Canada, said the company will also start producing this month OEM-quality urethane speaker terminals and vehicle specific A-pillar enclosures.
While the subwoofer enclosures will likely cater to the Canadian market due to their weight, the speaker terminals and A-pillar enclosures are available to the US. Lewis is also working on door panel dress up kits including custom speaker grilles and gauge pillar solutions.
We should mention that Lewis has worked at many 12 volt shops over the years and he claims ten years of formal auto body training. “If I wasn’t doing car audio full time or part time, I was doing auto body or electronics engineering…. but even when I worked on contract with the Canadian Space Agency, I still actually worked for Future Shop part time because I just love the industry and so I always have my fingers in it, whether it was full time or part time.”
Lewis was an electronics tech at oil company Halliburton when COVID hit. Halliburton closed that particular branch and laid off all the employees. Lewis had just built, in his spare time, a high end JL Audio demo car for distributor GEMSEN, which was attracting a lot of inquiries. He decided to start his own business selling speaker boxes and to put some of his expertise to work.
“I had been attending classes down in the US for composite castings and moldings while I was working in the oil field [for Halliburton]. So I was at the point where I knew I could build some composite parts….And I had enough interest in my under-seat truck enclosures, especially after Brian’s vehicle.” (Brian Graham of GEMSEN commissioned the JL Audio demo car). He added, “So we opened up a couple of years ago right in the middle of COVID.” He was already using the brand Last Resort Fabrication for instructional YouTube videos that he produced.
Last Resort is now carried by distributor Importel, which offers a shipping program that helps defray the cost of shipping heavy speaker boxes.
The enclosures can be made to order. A universal box can start at a few hundred dollars and a high end custom box can go beyond $6,000 in retail price.
The front of the box is an inch thick, even for the entry level line. The highest end Signature line has carbon fiber backing plates and a composite MDF brace inside that is 2-inches thick. Last Resort uses urethane components made in house. The color of the box is infused so if it’s bumped or scratched it can be quickly polished out. “There’s no paint to remove, there’s no wood underneath, it’s plastic, it’s moisture resistant. The bottom of the boxes are coated and many have plastic bottoms,” Lewis said.
A laser cut paper template ships with the products to show where to cut if you have to trim carpet or OEM components. “We try to make it so that an entry level installer could install it with a great level of confidence. Our A-pillars come with the templates to trim and cut everything,” said Lewis. The style of A-pillar used in the JL Audio car installs in about a half hour per side.
Lewis uses a pressure cast system for speaker terminal cups. Each can handle 60 amps per speaker. They have RGBW lighting connectors built into them so no wires are sticking out. For those who purchase the speaker terminal cups in bulk, Lewis can add the store logo.
For the pressure cast system, Lewis uses his own process and his own resin. He is looking at retailing the resin in the future. “I’ve worked the last seven years on developing this specifically for car audio because it’s extremely high quality and that way we don’t have products that are made of Bondo and wood. Everything is cast to an OEM manufacturer level or better.”
A-pillars all have on-axis mounting and they are built to last 30 years. “If we can’t make it last 30 years, we don’t make it,” Lewis said. There’s a 10 year warranty against fading on A-pillars.
The subwoofer enclosures are built in CAD and the vehicles in which they are to fit are scanned in 3D.
The speaker terminals begin shipping first week in April. A-pillars ship later this month with models for four different vehicles.
Last Resort is owned by both Lewis and his partner Ashlee Lemaire.
