Ok, when I bought my car it had a stock setup; stock 4x6's, 6x9's, and a stock AM/FM/cassette, all from a 1994 Buick Century. Not Bose, not Concert Sound... just Delco. They didn't have very good highs, but had quite decent lows.

Well, I now have:
Pioneer DEH-P6600 50wx4
Pioneer TS-A4615 4x6"
Pioneer Premier TS-929 6x9"
(2) Audiobahn AW1200Q 12" subs
Kenwood KAC-929s 1000w amp
4 gauge Monster Cable wiring (Monster interlink too)
Homemade 3/4" MDF dual sub box


With the subs disconnected, there is NO bass. It's not the settings on the radio either, as if I turn up the bass or the lows on the equalizer, it gets distorted. Do I need to amplify these speakers? Why do they sound so bad!?

 

You have subs. Why do you want bass out of those speakers?

Anyway, if you're trying to run those speakers off deck power, and the deck doesn't have an internal high-pass filter, buy pair of 100uf non-polarized capacitors and wire one in series with each 6x9, and buy a pair of 200uf non-polarized caps to wire in series with each 4x6. This will help filter the bass out of them which will reduce that distortion you hear.

 

Does you deck have a sound focus eq?If you do then you can focus bass to you 6x9's and highs to your 4x6'a,and visa versa.

 

My radio has a million equalizers... and I don't know how to use them all! Possibly there is a setting that will take place of the capacitors?

 

On that model there should be a button that says sfeq(eq-fx) on it.Push that and push left for the bass side of it and right for the treble.Up and down for more,less sound.

 

yeah,I just looked and it's on the bottom right of the deck.

 

Ok, I pushed that and it is currently set to Custom. When I push left on the directional button, it just sets the sound to the left (but not entirely), right is vice-versa.

From what I've seen, this eq-fx thing just modifies the equalizer settings... so I guess that's what I have to learn how to use!

 

An equalizer won't help you. You need to learn how to work the crossover (also called filter) if that deck has one. If not, you need the caps.

 

I had the same problem with mine.No bass and almost s hollow sound.The shop that built my box showed me how to adjust it and now I can turn my subs off and it still sounds good.It's hard to diagnose sound problems over the web.

 

Ya, I know, you guys can't really help me much more than you have without being here!

It does have crossovers, high/low pass filters, etc etc... but I can't seem to get them right. Maybe I need to seek out someone who has one of the higher-end Pioneer's as well, and knows them in and out!

 

Just get a copy of the users manual and read it. If you still don't understand how it all works...just play around with it until you can get it to sound good.

Pioneer makes a great HU, but the speakers are nothing to get exited about.

The best thing to do is get a reasonable quality 4 channel amp and power the speakers with that. Be sure it has front and rear crossovers and gain controls.

Even if you run a 25w rms X 4, it will still sound better than the 50 watt per channel HU.