I have Pioneer something or others up front, and I *had* stock speakers in back (which sounded pretty damn good IMHO). Anyways, I picked up a set of MB Quart component speakers (woofer, tweeter, crossover) and tested them on my bench with a home stereo receiver. They sounded great! But once I installed everything into the car (lots of wiring...) they sound like ***. But that's understandable, as I'm sure these would benefit from an amp... so that's not my problem.

My problem is, now all 4 speakers have very distorted highs. That's including my front speakers, which I didn't touch.

Could I have blown my headunit trying to power these MB Quarts?

 

probably the mb quarts require much more power than the stock speakers... I doubt you ruined your headunit...

people don't realize how horrible headunit amplifiers sound/perform...

also, check your crossover for adjustments you can make.. there are typically a few places to hook up the tweeters, to raise or lower the output of the tweeter.

 

Right, I know my headunit can't power them, and I will need to amplify them. But what I want to know is why my front speakers, which I didn't change anything, now have bad clipping or distortion on the highs; ever since I installed the components into the rear!

I have both crossovers set for '0' for the tweeters. It's either that or some settings like -3, -6, etc.

 

What wiring did you do "a lot of," exactly?

maybe you have a short somewhere and it's causing some problems... you should have been fine with the stock wiring...

 

Lots of wiring meaning:

Stock wire to crossover
Crossover to tweeter
Crossover to woofer

x2

 

Sounds like ether two speaker wires are just hitting one another, or one wire is just hitting ground. Double, triple check all wiring....

 

Ok, I guess that's all it could be. I was worried I might have toasted the H/U though, as I didn't think the rears were shorting since they *were* working, just shattily.

 

It's odd the sounds you will get some times with wires just touching, not really a short, not really and open, not really a resistance...

 

but it sure as hell isn't good for the headunit... depending on the quality, it may or may not trip some sort of internal protection...