Xophertony

well my 20$ target deck finaly broke.the faceplate fell on the ground and no longer works, the unit still works, but you can't see what you are doing, so i have an excuse to spend some money.

here are the fetures i am looking for IN ORDER OF IMPORTANCE

1. it needs to pump at least 45Wx4

2. it needs to have HPF and LPF selectable by chanel, this way once i buy some nice rear components i dont blow the tweeters out

3. i need to be able to tell it that it has x wattage speakers in the front and x watage speakers in the rear. for example 30 watts in the front and 70w components in the back.

4.rotary volume **** instead of (+) or (-) buttons

5. red face instead of blue or green. to match by bird interior

those last two are not neccisary, but if presented with two decks that had 1,2, and 3; 4, and 5 would become the deciding point. my brother has a Pioneer Premier deh-p650 that has HPF and a rotary volume ****. but it does not have the other things i want. all in all however i like the way the deck interfaces. the face allso looks ultra calssy.

here is a link if you want to know what i am talking about:http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/pn..._35300,00.html

if anyone can segust a few head units that meet these criteria i would realy apriciate it. i looked around pioneers sight and did not find anything that i thought would work, i was going to look at sonys sight, but it is so difficult to navigate......

oh, if the unit was under $400 that would be best. however post any units you know of regardless of cost.

thanks alot guys.

firebirdjosh

iTrader: (1)

Just a few comments:
1. Most decks ratings are fabricated, there can be 45x4 louder than 50x4 or 52x4. A quality deck will be louder (without distortion) in many cases.
2. You can get simple crossovers or use parts from radio shack for extremely cheap to creative filters. Components aren't going to sound good off of a stock deck amp.
3. Most speakers are rated to handle well over what the decks will put out.

Xophertony

thanks for the input. the pioneer my brother has pumps some major sound through his components. (50W x 4)

just to clarify i am nopt looking for competition sound. i just mostly want to not blow out speakers all the time like some guys. i ocasionaly turn up my music to the point of drowning out 60MPH road noise and would like to not run the risk of damaging my equipment.

up until this point i have been running a target brand deck and STOCK 1986 pontiac speakers. my target deck broke and so my brother lent me his pioneer since his car was going through a four week engine swap and complete ground up suspension rebuild. and two weeks in i am hearing distortion in the rear speakers... i just want somthing that will not blow my speakers and sounds good. not great, but good.

also, i am no wiring expert and the last thing i need is to have a bunch of stuff under my dash filtering sound and things like that. i have always thought that is what decks and equalizers are for. not that i feel i need an equalizer.

anyway, are my specs totaly bogus? someone help me out here...

NEEDAZ

Almost every deck will put out distortion. You have to know what it sounds like and turn it down. Distortion is what is kill most peoples speakers. If it's not loud enough, you need an amp. And EQs and X-overs are different things.

Jim85IROC

iTrader: (2)

what kind of filter capabilities are you looking for? Your first post wasn't real clear. If you buy a component set, you'll be using the passive crossovers that come with them, so nothing you do on the head unit is going to ever have any effect on the tweeters to blow them. If you are just looking for a selectable high pass to filter bass out of the components, that should be easy to find, but if you're looking for a head unit with full active filtering abilities, it's going to be slim pickings. The only ones I can think of for under a grand are the Alpine CDA-9853 and 9855, and I wouldn't touch either of them with a 10 foot pole.

Xophertony

i just wanted a high pass filter going to the fron speakers and a lowpass for the sub.

the other thing i was talking about was the ability to tell the deck what size my speakers are so it will only give them what they can handle, but after reviewing speakers i belive any decent set i get will be WELL above the 45-60 Watts of deck power. so i think i will not be needing that feature. i saw it on my cousins deck a few years back and thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Gummie

A few comments on deck power:

As mentioned, a 45x4 deck can sound louder than a 50x4 or even a 60x4. Deck power ratings are bogus for want of a better word. Most good decks are only putting out around 26 watts RMS. Peek wattage doesn't matter, but unfortunately most companies amp wise and all companies headunit wise use it as a selling point. In other words, your brother's 50x4 head is only feeding your speakers 24-26 watts.

If you are going to be installing components at some point you probably already know that they will come with crossovers. You don't have to worry about them at all once you install them. Installation is really simple: run a speaker wire to the crossover (it's a box) and then run wires to your mid/tweet from the crossover. If you're able to tackle installing component speakers, you should be able to install the crossovers. You don't have to have them in any specific location (if you're mounting rear components you could have your crossover inside your sail panel). You could use your head as a crossover instead of an external crossover, but I don't recommend it at all.

The Alpine CDA-9833 can be configured to do a tweeter/midrange/sub crossover network, but you will lose the ability to use a rear channel since it will treat the tweeters as the front channel and the mids as the rear. I’m sure other decks can do it, but I only know about the 9833 because I read through my manual.

And finally, clipping is the only thing that will kill aftermarket speakers powered off any headunit (aka turning it up to the point of the head --not the speakers-- distorting).

When the sine wave is at a flat peek, it makes the speaker stop its motion and then suddenly start moving in the opposite direction. This action literally rips speakers apart.

NEEDAZ

Well, if your amping the sub you just need a deck with a high pass filter and sub pre-out. That's not that uncommon. You just need to check the specifications on the deck. And on the power, like has been said, 'it's distortion that kills speakers'. You need to know when you hear it and turn down the volume!

Xophertony

well i thought i did know to turn it down, but the only thing that would cause a speaker to distort at volume lvl 35 when it usualy does not distort until lvl 40 is speaker wear down, the only thing that wears down a speaker besides exposure to the eliments is distortion (right?) therefore i can only asume that my speakers have been distorting a tiny bit at peak moments (a realy low bass hit or particularly high symbol clap) and that it has been for such a short time that i have been unable to hear it.

does this sound possable? i am prety sure you can allready tell that i do not know too much about car audio.
(just enough to be a dnger to myself and others )


ok, so i guess i do not need crossovers in the head unit. that realy brings the cost of a headunit down. the only thing preventing me from getting the cheapest pioneer preimier series is the wattage. if i get a low wattage deck (one that advertises 60X4 and puts out 26-30) the deck will distort sooner (doing the speaker destroying "clipping" thing) and ruin even a 300W pair of speakers (not that i would get 300w speakers). so should i just get one that says it puts out 30x4 and get sepperate amps for each speaker? is this why everyone says to get an amp that is way to big for the speakers? so the clipping point would occur above where the speakers would allready destort? i think i finally get it.

do most of you guys run amps for every channel?

do i put the high pass filter before the amp or inbetween the amp and speaker?

should i get a low pass filter for my sub channel (the one comming from the preout)

thanks for helping me out with all this stuff guys. i read through this forum alot and have picked up alot, but there is still so much i do not know.

Gummie

I'm only going to reply to the things I know for sure. Hopefully Jim and NEEDAZ will chime in again.

Your stock speakers are 18 years old. They're also not designed to stand up to that much. Due to age and receiving some decent power, they might be making weird noises. What does it sound like? If it's a rattle coming from the speaker then that means the cone or surround ripped. If it's a nasty crunchy sound that means the voice coil is fried.

Distortion: if it was distorting you will (should) know it. It will sound like ***. I can't really describe it beyond it sounding muddy. As for volume level, try not to generalize by saying level whatever. Every headunit has its own output levels, even more so if you're running an amp for your speakers depending on when your gains are set. I usually listen at around 15 on my alpine and it's plenty loud.

Headunit choice: your logic makes since; if you're going to be buying an amp, why not get a cheaper head that doesn't put out as much power? The problem is that mid/high end units (which will sound better, have more features, etc) typically have 50x4/60x4 internal amps.

Amps: I personally am running two amps, one for the subs and one for my 4x6's and 6x9's. I bridged the front/rear speakers to create a 2 ohm stereo load on the amp. When Jim makes his kicks or when I make my own, I will rip out both my 4x6's and 6x9's and run just 6.5 comps.

If by high pass filter you mean the crossover for the woofer/tweeter it goes between the amp and speaker.

You won't need a low pass filter because your amp will have one built in. Odds are your head will also have an adjustment for it.

I'm sure someone will smack me if I'm wrong

Xophertony

the amp i have now for my bucketsub is a kenwood 70W piece of ****. i doubt it has any type of filter built in. it would advertise such a feture i am sure. i only mention it since it will probably go to the front speakers.

the only fetures i realy care about now that i know i don't need the filters or the wattage (from the head unit) are the volume **** and be able to play mp3s off of a cdr. oh, and of course the adjustable equalizer (low,mid,high) as well as a few presets (vocal, concert, rock, country, techno/dance etc..) can't think of anything else the pioneer has that i use....
somone let me know if i am forgetting anything vital.

one other question, just so the guys at cartoys/curcuitcity/stereoking/carstereocity or wherever don't try to screw me...

assuming both decks are the same quality wise, and the only difference is the output power... a deck could in theory have 5 watts of output (i know they do not make them that small) or 5000Watts of output and it would make NO DIFFERENCE in sound as long as i was using amps before the speakers. correct?

edit. also gummie, yes it is the muddy distortion sound. your right, not a real great way of describing it. kinda like mettalica was being played through a kazoo, and under an inch of pudding....

NEEDAZ

Well more then that can make a speaker ‘bad’. Age, the surrounds become brittle/dry rot and rip. The voice coil can separate. And so on. And your speakers are vary old. Also pointing to a particular volume setting has it’s problems. One is some CDs are louder then others. Most of the time the different sources have different levels. So just because it’s not distorting at volume level 35 with tuner, doesn’t mean it wouldn’t distort listing to your ‘Dead Leopards’ CD at 30. It also wouldn’t mean that ‘Guns and Butter’ wouldn’t distort at some lower level then the ‘Dead Leopards’ CD. You just need to turn it down 'Leonard' when you hear it.

Well it won’t bring the price down all that much. Like I said, grab a deck that has a HPF and a sub pre-out built in. It’s probably cheaper then buy anything quality separate from the HU. Look at the options and get one that has adjustable X-Over frequencies (I can’t think of any of the new ones that don’t). What you’re look for is a deck that will let you select the HPF frequency and the X-Over frequency for the sub pre-out (most will also let you control the sub pre-out level to). A lot of the upper-middle of the road HUs will have these built in. Go this way.

Stop bothering with the deck power. If you’re amping all the speakers don’t worry about it, it’s not that important. Concentrate on the other options.
Do you want it to play MP3s?

Some do, it's better.

Depends on the type of ‘filter’ you get. Just get it in the HU.

If it's a sub pre-out it should already be "filtered".

If you like Pioneer and are looking that way, let me dig through some of the models for you to look at.

ddn69

if you really want it to sound decent. Get some aftermarket speakers.(components if u choose)(which youll need kickpanels for) Forget about your rear speakers. Buy a nice head unit. Some even have EQs and filters in them. But you can control this from your amps too. I suggest getting a 2 channel amp for a component set you want. And a woofer with an amp. Remember ebay is your friend....

If your gonna be cheap though. Just get some aftermarket speakers for your stock locations and turn it the **** down. Cuz without amps your speakers will never sound great...Good at best.

Listening to stock speakers on a jensen head unit with a bucketsub will not do much for you. Sorry.

Gummie

Correct. The onlything you should care some about is preout voltage. Low voltage = high gain setting on your amp. You can get a line driver (it will increase the voltage in the RCAs) if worst comes to worst though.

ddn69

most higher quality head units come at least with 4v preouts so I wouldnt worry. Especially since your gonna want one with subwoofer preout. you can control the volume of your subs with this. using amps you wont need to pay attention to your head unit wattage. High pass filters on your 2 channel amp for your highs also reduce distortion at high volumes and makes it more clean cause it will reduce the bass coming into your mids/highs.

For your subwoofer amp youll want to set your gain maybe 3/4, your low pass to like 50hz and basically set it how you think it sounds good. I dont have much experience with component set amps so I cant say anything..

For sound quality your not gonna want any boosts from your head unit so turn the bass/etc to zero if not -5 or whatever sounds best.

Trial and error...Keep tuning.

NEEDAZ

Take a look at the Pioneer DEH-P6700. It has every thing you need in the HU and BBY has it at $220. The DEH-P3700 will fill the bill also, but the display STINKS for MP3s.

ScrapMaker

Gummie, you bridged your front and rear speakers? You must have lost your ability to fade, right? That must be annoying because you can't set your system quite right without that ability.

Personally, I don't think a deck is worth listening to without an external amplifier. I run my 4x6's with an available 75watts RMS, and my 6x9's with an available 150watts RMS. Overkill, but in the future when I have good components up front, I can actually use the 75/150 watts, (do they make 2ohm components?)

I bet you would be happy with the Pioneer DEH-P80MP

$399 and has a lot of great features. What you want and then some.

Xophertony

my plan is to replace 18 year old stock crap with a set of decent 6x9 components in the stock rear sailpanel location. i just need to find a way to seal them in. a sealed airspace will make a good set of speakers that much better.

as far as kickpannals, while i do know thwy allow for better sound and better acustics with that sound (as wel as allow for bigger speakers) i do not want people to be able to lock intoo my security nightmare of a t-top car and go "oooohh" it must look stock (other then hu, with wil always be faceless.).

what do adjustable x-over freqeuncies do?

what power rating is good for the preout?

yes i am well aware a jensen unit with stock garbage and a bucketsub will sound like ***. i have been listening to it like that for months, only recently have i experienced audio clarity (the pioneer through stock garbage and a bucketsub) and i must say, i like it. thus the money being spent.... no more listining to "*** sound 4000"

thanks for helping the sound newb. i realy need the help i will review the deck sejustions and make another post.

Xophertony

--DEH-P6700
it seems to be mostly the same as the deh-p650 with the exeption of updated visual interface/phisical looks. and mp3 capability.

i have two questions
1. it says it has a 2.2V preout. is that enough? i thought it was suposed to be 4?
2. 1k ohm impedence. what does that mean?

--DEH-P37MP
almost the same as above exept the slot for cds is on the front of the deck and the display sucks. not just for mp3s, it just plain sucks. definatly worth the 50 bucks extra to jump up the the DEH-P6700

--DEH-P80MP
wow.... this one might be out of my price range with an M.S.R.P of $440.
i hate the display. yet i love the display. very unique look that i would need to see in person to make the final call on. the "commander is also somthing i would need to go to cartoys and try before i buy into.

aside from cosmetic differences this deck has a few added features. it seems to have much better filtering and has THREE sets of preouts (front,rear,sub/nonfading) this is a handy feature because i can run rca style to my speaker amps. but is it worh another $200. i don't know
it also has 4.0V preouts with only 100 ohms impedence.

questions..
1. by using the preouts instead of the decks ample 60watts peak (23 rms) amplifiers i would keep the unit cooler (right? or would it use them anyway and burn itself up?)

2. impedence, that is like resistance right? the less impedence a deck has the less trouble the sound data has getting to where it needs to go resulting in a stronger clearer signal, and of course much better sound. correct?

ddn69

i dont think the heat of your head unit should be a problem. The previously suggested head units in the posts above seem to be fairly cheap. AKA 200ish+ on ebay.

As for your kick panel comment. You can get stock looking kick panels. Jim85 will be making some soon for public. You can cover up speakers with grills too. Or maybe just tint your windows?

Xophertony

about the kick pannels (in general, no one's in perticular, i know a few folks have made their own, qlogic has some, subenclosures.com had some) what makes them so much better then having speakers in dash? can they acomidate bigger speakers? i know bouncing sound off glass makes for great acustics (at least i know that is the only reason my bucket sub is worthy of the electricity it takes. sounds like a ported bandpass 12 with the hatch shut) so whats the big deal about sail panel units?

ddn69

kick panel setups provide room for better speakers, they also provide a better distance from the driver. They kill leg room though. Hence why Ill never use em...

ScrapMaker

the sound is crap compared to kickpanels because you are hearing two different sounds, one slightly out-of-phase because it's reflecting off of the dashboard, and the other you get as actual off-axis sound from the woofer in the dash.

Not only will you have off-axis sound deterioration, but you have to keep in mind that one of the best in-dash 4x6 is the Infinity Kappa 462.5cfp, which I believe has a puny 3" woofer. You can EASILY find a 6.5" kickpanel component, which is also a higher-quality build. You can feed them more power and they will sound cleaner.

about the pre-amp voltage. True, the higher the better, but I've heard decks from 2-6v and I've never noticed a difference except that I had to turn the gain up on the amplifier. Most amps can compensate for inputs as low as 0.2v. As long as you don't have bad wiring/connections, you should be fine.

Have you looked at the two high-end pioneers lately? the p80mp, and the 7700? both are nice models.

Decks output roughly 22watts RMS, at FOUR ohms per channel, if that helps at all. You may have been getting sensitivity confused with other aspects. Also don't confuse the Signal-to-Noise ratio with a deck's tuner sensitivity. (8600mp has the best I've ever seen...on paper, and real life)

your end goal will probably include a separate four-channel amplifier to run your mids/highs, but until then you will need a good headunit to take care of that. Unfortunately, to keep the headunit from clipping, you will have to cut the bass rather high, like 160hz, unless you drive around with A/C, then you have more options. That's why it's almost a necessity to run a separate amplifier.

-Steve

Xophertony

i don't have ac. no power window or power doors. only lights, under hood stuff (stock) and audio equipment.

i NEED legroom. no kickpanels for tony. they would cramp my driving style. as cool as car audio is, the moment any of it affects my ability to oporate my car in an eficiant, reliable, comfortable manner, or hinder my cars performance in any way, it's gone. for example, i would never get a larger alternator to compensate for the large draw of audio equipment.

also i think i will be getting amps at the same time as the head unit. this way i can install it all at once. but i think i will get two seperate two channel amps (mostly cause i allready have one) for the four main speakers, pluss an additional one for the sub. this will also allow me to have the smaller front amp under the dashpad (there is a bit of room in there) and the rear channel amp...... hmm. where should that go. under the drivers side seat? inside the rear drivers side seat back? i'll figure somthing out. after reviewing the deck options (pending me trying them all out at a "factory authorised dealer" tomorow) i believe i have decided on the pioneer dehp6700.

now i just need to pick a set of front and rear speakers and then amps to power them.

EDIT: can you get 6x9 components, i only can find 2 and 3 way speakers. i want seperate components. anyone know of anything good?

NEEDAZ

A note on the DEH-P80. A lot of what you are paying for with that HU IS THE AMP. That HU uses an internal switch mode supply to give the amp IC 18Vdc instead 12Vdc. It also uses some variant of a Class-G amp. There is a switch on the bottom to turn this extra supply on and put it in “60W Mode”. So your paying for something your not going to be using. I also don’t like how the DEH-P7700mp and DEH-P80mp look. Personal taste, they’re ugly.
Adjustable X-Overs let you set the Fx. That is to say, you pick the frequency you start blocking. So a LPF set at 100Hz would pass 100Hz and down, a HPF set at 100Hz would pass 100Hz and up. (This is a over simplification, there is of cores a slope at the Fx).
2V pre-out are fine. And don’t bother your self with the impedance. That 100 ohm output impedance must be wrong any way. Both should be 1Kohm-10Kohm. Misprint.
Not driving speakers off of the internal amp would make the HU run cooler and pull less current.
I don’t know of any one that’s making 6x9 comps.

Gummie

Yeah, I can't fade front/rear anymore. I figured two things: 1) I never did play with the front/rear fade so I wasn’t going to be missing out on anything and 2) it would be much more fun to have roughly 2x the power than the ability to fade. I kinda wish that I could fade to the rear and add in a 600 Hz lpf so the 6x9's could produce some more mid bass, but it doesn't bother me that much considering that I plan to rip them out of the car in a month or two.

ScrapMaker

yeah I hate the way the 80 has a smaller screen and looks like total crap.

if you are getting an amplifier for sure with your headunit, you may want to check out some of the Blaupunkt headunits that do not have internal amplifiers. The have some nice features and you're not paying for an internal amp.

Xophertony

cool, blaupunkt eh?

also, what amps should i get, and what speakers?

also, wasn't there a guy who made it so he could put BIGGER speakers in the sail pannel area and keep a stock look? i searched but could find nothing.

ScrapMaker

you could put some 7" components back there, I guess

ddn69

anythin is possible with enough thought/work...

CrazyHawaiian

Maybe you guys already said this stuff but here's some stuff that might help you Xophertony.

As others have said, dont pay attention to peak power numbers like 50x4 when you're shopping. The key word you need to look for is RMS power. This applies to everything, the head unit, the amps, and the speakers. Peak power ratings are a marketing tool. RMS is what is really matters.

There's pretty much two ways you're gonna do it. Either you're gonna power your speakers off the head unit, or you're gonna power them with external amps. The first way is more of a match for the budget minded setup that will use the packaged speaker sets like 6x9's or 4x6's. The second way is more of a match for the high end setup that will be using component speaker sets like 6.5's or 5.5's with their own crossovers. I recommend you decide which way you wanna do it fron the start and stick with it. You can mix and match but in my opinion you're gonna end up paying for a bunch of features you didnt fully utilize. If you have to, build your system one pice (or a few pieces at a time), you dont need to buy everything at once. You also dont NEED the high end setup with external amps and components speakers to have a good sounding setup. But I would be a liar if I said the high end stuff didnt sound better and have more potential. It all depends on what you want and how much you can spend. Once you decide which way you're gonna go you can really focus on what head unit features you need as well as what other parts you'll need for your system. If you're gonna do it the first way and power the speakers off the head unit then you need a strong RMS power rating and built in crossovers. If you're gonna do it the second way and power the speakers with an external amp then you need good pre-amp outs. Definately go for the head unit that gives you more acoustic controls like EQ and whatnot.

Some of the higher level competition head units dont even have an RMS rating, they only have pre-amp outs. Those pre-amp outs will connect to the external amplifiers. The voltage rating signifies how strong the signal to the amp will be. 2.2v is a minimum in my opinion, 5v or higher would be competition level. Most headunits have multiple pre amp outs, giving you the ability to run multiple amps.

If you decide to go the second route and power the speakers with external amps I would recommend you save up and buy 1 good amp with multiple channel outs instead of the 3 amps like you're saying. A competition setup would be a different story (multiple amps a good idea), but a nice 5 channel amp can power all your speakers (even a sub) and if matched well with the head unit, you'll have alot of control over the acoustics from the head unit. I think this is a great setup for the average system - Head unit with good features and strong pre-amp outs, good 5 channel amp with alot of features, and then the component sets w/ crossovers and a sub. Or if the head unit has a pre amp out just for the subs, then consider 2 amps, a 4 channel and a single mono for the sub.

As for the components, they do make adapter plates to mount components in packaged speaker set locations. For example they make a conversion for the 6x9 speaker mount to mount 6.5" component mid's, and then mount the tweeters externally. They also make a conversion for the front 4x6 to run 4" components and tweets externally, but I dunno if this will work with our dash because of shallow depth behind the mounting surface.

Hope that helped. Just remember, these are my opinions and I'm no expert.

Gummie

There are not that many 4" components out there to choose from and there’s not a good place to mount the tweeters, so I would say not to bother if you're set on keeping dash speakers.

I'm going to agree with what CrazyHawaiian said about your amps, but for different reasons. I have no qualms against using multiple amps for your main speakers as long as they're matched to each other. In other words, they have the same s/n ratio and sound pretty close in terms of sound quality. I don't care if wattage is varied between the two because your 4x6's will defiantly not need as much power as the 6x9s. It will sound weird to use a lower level amp for your front speakers and a better/newer amp for your rears.

Also, it's MUCH easier to mount all the amps in the same general location in terms of wiring. Just run a 0/2/4 gauge to your hump/wherever, install a breaker box, and run foot long leads to your amps. Lots easier than running a multipul wires from your battery to diffrent locations in your car.

ScrapMaker

3 amps max, one for each sub, and one for your highs... that's IT. otherwise it's overkill.

and just so no one gets confused, 6.5" components sound wildly better than the 4x6 version of the same company... any way you look at it

check around, you can usually get some cheap 5/6 channel amps on the internet.

Xophertony

i think i am just going to make an mdf plate and go with a set of 6" components in the back and 4' components in the front. probably put the tweeter where the a/c vents are since i have no ac. what do ya'll think?

as far as decks go, no one local caries blaupunkt. but if anyone can segest a good model i will look it up (their site is garbage, so is sony's) i found an alpine that i want. CDA9855. but if i could get LAST YEARS model that would be better. i could give a crap about auto fold down face, it just needs an organic screen....

amps. amps are expensive! the EA3422 by eclipse seems like a good choice. it is a 4 channel amp. "Adjustable High-Pass Frequency (50–200Hz, L/R Independent)" 70Wx4 RMS. then i will use my kenwood bridged 35w (70 total) amp for the sub.

i would mount the nice 4 channel in the fender well, but i want to be able to acess it easily for tuning. i was thinking about keeping it in the map pocket behind the seat. i could cut a small hole in the bottom of the pocket for the wires. use looming so it wouldn't look as tacky.then anytime i want to tinker with it i just fold down the seat and lift it out of the map pocket a little bit (there would be slack in the wires) any thoughts?

ScrapMaker

erm, that sounds a tad weak for the sub, in my opinion.

also, typically you want the woofer and tweeter to be on the same plane, but I'm sure someone will chime in with details.

what about putting some shallow-mount 6.5"s in the doors? Do you have automatic windows?

Xophertony

i have NO power options, but i realy do not want to change the speakers from my stock mounting location. i want this to look as stock as possible.

as for the sub.. .well i might be wrong about the wattage, but i do not need alot, back when i had that same sub/amp combo in my jeep charokee it was more then enough power. i dont like alot of bass, just enough to supliment the sound from the midranges. you know how most new cars have like an 8" in the trunks stock, how it just adds a little bump. THAT is the type of bass i like. i dont want mirror rattling boom. however it nice to ba able to turn it up a bit sometimes.