To aftermarket amp new speakers, or to HU amp them, help me decide some things

[Kdutts]

To start off, my infinity amp died a good month and a half ago. Luckily, I got my espelir cat back, and then my megan racing downpipe a while after, and have been able to survive on that for the time being. My previous setup in a different car was RF stage 3s with two p5002 2 channel 500 watt RMS (bridged). Well, before getting the eclipse, the stage 3s blew (my fault for buying a best buy product). I should be closing a deal on some JL W6v2s with a JL mono for the junk in the trunk. Since I have two decent amps lying around, I am debating using them to drive my in car speakers. I figure this would be a reasonably easy install (probably the same difficulty as rewiring the speakers to run off the HU's amp. I have a Pioneer 8500MP with RCA outs, facilitating the four channels that I would need. (I'll probably do a mini rewire to run HU amped front speaker output to some new 3.5s. Now, I like decent sound quality, but crystal clear sparkling highs and a fleshed out mid are not supremely important at this phase in my life, so unless they would end up being reasonably cheap, component speakers are not a definite "must" to me. I want to have power handling in car high enough so that i don't end up with the textbook "BOOM BOOM ::mumble:: ::mumble:: BA BA BOOM BOOM ::mumble::" that some people I know have as a result of having way too much in the trunk for the in car speakers to cope with. Presuming I pretty much zero the gain on the subs so that they are pushing minimum wattage RMS, what speakers could handle that power. I will be capping the JL amp. Is there anythign I am going to need on the part of the charging system for this setup? Secondly, if this is an outright bad call on my part, someone slap me out of it, I can just sell these speakers as well. Thanks for everything guys!

 

[napkinthief]

wow lotta stuff said in that post lets see

im taking it your stock speakers are still in the doors and backseats?

if so, i would wire the front two to the headunit, put a smaller amp for the 2 rear seats and make them mids only, then use a big sub or 2 smaller ones in the trunk WITH A GOOD BOX. with a bad box, the sound will be so bad u think the speakers are broken, thats what causes the mumbles and such

if u want to sell any amp lemme know im looking for a decent one with not so big of a price. ( power one 100w, 8 ohm sub, i think 12")

 

[Attack Eagle]

The front two are already a component set, and teh dash speakers are NOT 3.5"s

Since you don't have another component set ready to drop in there leave em be for the time being.

Reason? the factory amplifer is also the crossover for the 4 front speakers. If you disconnect them from the amp you lose the x over and that is bad unless you happen to have a couple of passive's sitting around you can use.
However since you have an aftermarket head unit they may be disconnected from the amp already (unless someone fabb'd up a din plug to 4 rca cable to keep it working...FATCHANCE).

If ythey are running on H/u power now, are the dash speakers playing? if not go search for some passive x overs for a 6.5 inch component set and then follow the tech article I wrote on how to wire them up... at that point you can either feed them the 22w from your pioneer or from a small 30-35w amp wiht the internal pioneers xover set to about 100 hz.

I would never ampthe rear speakers before the front...

 

[Kdutts]

I had a gut feeling that the sizing on the dash speakers was wrong, and I think that is just what the crutchfield site threw out to me, so yeah. I am planning on replacing all of my speakers in car because all the stock stuff is blown. I'll start looking up stuff for a component set with passive x overs. Looking at the reccomendation for power handling from you guys, I will probably go for HU amplification if the difference in wattage is going to be as small as 10 watts, and worst case scenario is that I can change it later on if I really want to. Hopefully I can get something working that will not be way less quality than the Bose setup in mia madre's GMC Envoy. Thanks for the quick responses guys, I'm always up for reccomendations from audio people...well except for the audio people at the store, cause we all know how that goes....

 

[Attack Eagle]

If you are going to replace the fronts with aftermarket component set then forget my power recommendation... most decent components need at least 50 w rms to play well and some go as high as 100 rms or more...

I can make a recommendation to you...
JBL GTO 6.5 components... they sound great and are relatively inexpensive... circa $200 or so... I think retail is $229...

some people also like Total (entry level JL audio stuff) Its good, about 179 and can handle 150w RMS (yes 150w rms) though I would never feed it more than 100... they sound a bit harsh to my ears but most people really like them. ( i liked em better on 100 w than on 150w...)


In short, stock = h/u power
aftermarket components = amp power