ok I have an 88 Camaro sport coupe without t-tops or anything to worry about getting in the way of, what would you recommend for a complete audio set up from Head unit to subs for under 500 and it needs to sound decent i already have a 200 watt pioneer amp so what do you reccomend? thanks guys, Soule88

 

$500 is not easy to work with but ill give you some pointers. start off with a high end cd player. something like a pioneer premier, kenwood excelon, rockford, or clarion. expect to spend $150-200 or more. dont skimp on this item because it is the most important piece in a setup like what your looking for. next, replace all four factory speakers w/ some good quality aftermarket speakers. pretty much the companies above will do with the addition of kicker, infinity, and a few others. you could probably get some good quality here for $150 with no problem. lastly, get a nice 12" subwoofer in a sealed enclosure. shop around for the sub and build your own box. i would suggest going to your local audio store and listening to what they have to offer. pick what sounds good to you and you cant go wrong.

good luck and i hope this helps.

 

BuMp!

 

you will not even get a decent head unit for $500. you'll get each a decent component of the system for $500 a piece. a good sub will run you 300ish, box another 150, nice HU will be 400, another 80ish for wires
and thats a pretty shi.tty stereo

 

ebay is your friend ....

pioneer 4500 $138

http://www.stores.ebay.com/id=7779378

 

Blaupunkt San Jose CD/MP3 player $155
-----This CD player has 3 sets of 4-volt preamp outputs — sub outputs have built-in low-pass crossover (100 Hz at 12 dB per octave)

Audiobahn ABC525T 5.25 component set $78

JBL BP300.1 300+watt rms sub amp $150

Infinity Reference 1230w 12" sub $69

Use your pioneer to power the components $0
Build your own sub box $70
Total $522

All these prices include shipping from ikesound. You might find it cheaper on ebay.
And by the way, $500 isnt alot to work with at all. I would either save up, or buy a really nice deck and then wait for more cash.

 

I've got the Kenwood Exceleron Series. I got it at Best Buy as a return. It was under $200 installed. What had happened was that someone had returned it because he wrecked his car before he could get it put in. Your best bet is to go to a Best Buy or Circuit City and ask them if they have any returns that they'd sell to you real cheaper. The main thing is that you have to get it installed there because if it doesn't work, then it's not your fault, and if they can't get it to work, they switch it with a brand new one in stock, hehe. I doubt you can get subs and a custom box for that cheap though. I have two 10 JL's in a custom made box with a JL amp and that was kinda pricey. My whole sound system, if I put a price on it including the work that I did would be well over $2500. (Kenwood head unit, 2 pioneer 6x9's, 2 I believe 4 and 1/4 in dash, custom box, 2 JL 10's, and JL amp).

 

I'm going to give advice that's pretty different than everybody else.

Don't waste money on an expensive head unit. All you get with a more expensive head unit is more bells and whistles. The sound quality is THE SAME. The only time you get a difference in sound quality is if you buy a company's real high-end stuff that's built in a different chassis. There are a few exceptions like JVC that has their normal garbage and their Digifine series, but that's not usually the case.

Take alpine for example. Their $175 no-frills cd player has the exact same components inside it as their $600 decks. The only difference is the bells and whistles that are all contained inside the microprocessor(s). The pre-amp, amplification, d/a converter and anything else that might actually effect sound quality is all the same.

Get a nice clean entry level deck and try to stretch your thin budget on the rest of the stuff. Figure $175-200 for the deck.

That leaves $325.

That will buy you a nice set of front & rear speakers.

At least you'll have good tunes while you save for an amp and sub. If you try to stretch $500 to include everything, you're going to have absolute garbage.

 

wow thanks guys you are so much help now where can i get some box plans?

 

The link at the top of the page, subenclosures.com
He does really good work and sells the templates to make a really nice box.

Brian

 

I have a crude drawing on one of my posts, also with some pictures of the finished box and how it looks. Some people who have heard it have also commented. Just look up awesome sub idea in the car audio section.

 

i spent $800 on my system and that for everything from monster cables, rca cables, pionerr head unit, bandpass box, 400watt amp, 200 watt amp, pionerr 6x9's and amp install kit and also paying my friend for givning me a hand puttin it all in. all i can say is that on 12 out of 30 on the headunit volume it hits nice deep bass and yet i have the power on the amps on half way.

 

it was $129.99 for the subbox bandpass, $150 for the 400 watt amp, $99.99 for the 200watt amp, $179.99 i think for the headunit, $100 for the rear Pionerr 6x9's and other bunches of money for all the wires and connectors and y connectors and gold batter post terminal.

in this pic u can see the head unit.