Finally getting around to replacing my stock Delco speakers, haha, this is what I have in mind:

What I already have:

Pioneer 3-way 4x6 150 watt speakers

Installed these myself the other day and they seem really nice and already over power the rear Delco's as it is....

What I still need to get:

Pioneer 3-way 6x9 240 watt speakers
-OR-
Pioneer 4-way 6x9 300 watt speakers

Do you think that 300 watts would be too much? I found them at Wally world tonight and they are a lot cheaper than what Best Buy wants for 3-way 6x9's with 240 watts. I can get the 300 watts for 70 bucks and the 240 watts for 90 bucks so its obvious which is the better deal, but I'm wondering if I get the 300 watt speakers if they will be too much and too easily over power the front ones.

Oh and by the way, I'm running these through my original Delco radio (1990 UM7 Radio)

A new head unit is out of the question, I will not replace it, I like it too much, and want to maintain a stock look to the car.

Edit: I also plan on getting some kind of sub/amp set up going to, but to maintain a stock look and keep the entire trunk space useful, I was thinking of making boxes to go in the rear storage and in the spare tire area, its a risk to take out the spare on a DD, but its one I'd be willing to take for great sound.

 

Well the amount of watts (240 or 300) are peak, you need to look at the RMS of the speaker. Also, the speakers will recieve only as much power as the HU will put out and since you don't want to replace the stock head unit have you thought about picking up an line-out converter and adding an amp to power all four speakers? It will enable you to retain your stock deck but get the sound quality you want. Just takes time wiring it up, I have one in my girls G6 but I'm only using it to send signal to the subs I installed. (Using the Scosche SLC-4)

 

Pioneer tends to sell a couple different grades of speakers. If you've got entry level (cheap) Walmart speakers in front, stick with entry level Walmart speakers in the rear. If they're higher end Pioneers, buy higher end speakers to match. As long as you keep them relatively matched, you should be happy with it.

As mentioned don't worry about the ratings, if you're using a factory deck you're far more likely to damage the speakers with distortion then too much power.

As far as 3-way vs 4-way, they're both going to do basically the same thing. 4 ways just have that added super tweeter that produces that much more high end, but you probably don't want that in that location anyway.

 

Well I went and bought and installed those speakers tonight, and they are absolutely amazing, even with my stock radio they work great, and almost all of my music comes in loud and clear with no interference, they make the car shake too! I'm really glad I went with these instead of the other ones.

 

Actually the ones in the front were the more expensive ones and they were from Best Buy, the cheap Wally world ones are actually the higher end ones, and they cost less!

 

Drew made a point you should read again...FYI

You can blow a high quality speaker with a low output amp ie;

A 10W amp can easily blow 100W speakers.
Turn the stock head unit up lots and it's low wattage output will distort and destroy the speakers.
Take it easy on those new speakers and find out what RMS your factory head puts out, or go with DJ's suggestion.

 

Where can I get the equipment then? I don't want to blow them......but they already do sound amazing

 

I'm looking now, and most of the amps that I've found don't supply enough power to my speakers for all 4 channels, but if the car only does stereo do I only need 2 channels? Or does it mean 4 channels for 4 speakers or what.....I could wire one up pretty easily, I'm pretty good with that stuff and all I would have to do is wire it so it would sit underneath my passenger seat and run the wires through the center console and out the side to the amp under the seat, and no one would ever know until I slide the seat up.

 

Anyway....this is what they look like, they're really sweet!

 

Well as mentioned before, pushing your head unit to its limits to power your speakers will cause the signals to clip and send damaging amounts of DC voltage to the speakers with kills the voice coils. Do you listen to your music at 80%+ max volume? If your like me, you turn your radio up to compensate with other noise than you might want to wire up another amp to power the four speakers. If not than your speakers should last a decent amount of time.

As to your question about the channels, each region of the car is in own channel (front right, front left, rear right, rear left) so you'll be looking at a four channel amp.

Say you buy this amp, Eclipse EA4200, each speaker will constantly get 60w of power and your sound will be much better.

Also mounting your amp under the seat can be hazardous with the lack of airflow to cool it unless the amp has an internal fan.

 

Alright so that clears up my channel questions.

So to say the speakers don't need a constant power supply for their max voltage, just something more than what the stock HU would give them, makes sense.

This is the amp that I found on Walmart.com while I was looking at the specs for my speakers.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Pioneer-GM...Power/11062603

I guess that one won't be enough now after what your telling me, or unless you tell me otherwise.

As for the RMS power, the front ones are 35W and the rears are 40W, so if I get an amp that will constantly send 60W of power to the speakers then they should be fine right?

Does RMS power mean like the minimum constant power supply for the speaker?

As for the amp itself, where would you suggest to put it so I can maintain a stock look? I don't want people to know that I have some special speakers under her skin until I turn it up!

Thanks again, I really appreciate the help!

 

Yes, rms is the continous power output level.

Personally, I'm not a fan of running two full range speakers per channel. Finding a four channel amp with about 45-55rms to power them would be my choice and will make them come alive. Slightly overpowering the speakers will not hurt them like underpowering them will.

Mounting the amp in a secret place doesn't leave you with too many options, three I can think of are: where the spare tire is; behind the rear cargo box ; and making a lifted faux panel (to allow airflow) at the bottom of the well and keeping in bottom with the addition of a small fan for added insurenece. Being the price the amps are I wouldn't want mine to die due to overheating and not being able to RMA it.

Removing the spare tire in a DD can be a bit risky but the things you should take into consideration is how far you drive daily and how many flats have you had in the past.

 

look for an infinity 475a they put out 75x4 at 4ohms, and can be found refurbished for 70 bucks or less.

 

Never had a flat, some days I drive about 100 miles back and forth, and then most days I drive about 20, but yes, thats what I was thinking of doing, taking out my spare or hiding it in the trunk side cargo door.

I have AAA though too, so its not like I'd be stranded, plus my tires have a 75,000 miles warranty, and Sears(where I got them) will fix or replace them if anything happens to them for free. Haha, my car doesn't even have 75,000 miles!

Thanks for the advice ellocojorge, I'll try to see what I can find.

 

And this is what Amazon has:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listi...on=refurbished

 

http://stores.ebay.com/Harman-Audio


they dont have any right now, but keep an eye out for them

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/Infinity-475A-Ca...item2305726668

 

Keep in mind you can only go so far before the quality of sound is high enough that you're going to hear all the noise introduced by using the OEM headunit. There's no reason to go nuts with amps and high end components because the weak link will still be the AM/FM radio.

 

Yeah I know, thats why I'm not going to spend a lot of money on a really nice amp, just enough to feed the speakers enough power so I won't damage them.

And maybe sometime in the future I can take apart the radio and clean it and maybe get some new parts and wires for it, that would help improve the sound, I should also check the connections.

The guy that I talked to at Best Buy today told me that I would need to get the amp of course, speaker wire to wire everything, and a low to high converter. Among some other things that I can't remember lol.

 

There is absolutely nothing you can do to make a AM/FM radio come close to the sound quality of the cheapest Walmart Pioneer CD player. Seriously, you're just throwing money away. Just don't crank the volume, and if you hear distortion turn down the volume. You'll spend more then $100 on a cheap 4ch amp, and it probably won't sound better then just swapping to an aftermarket head unit with a built in amp.

 

What he could do, to retain a stock looking deck, is use a newer model stereo from another gm car. been done and should help the signal quality/strength. but if he doesn't want to change it that is up to him. I have

 

After market head units are ugly and I absolutely refuse to put a POS after market head unit in my car. The Delco radio stays.

And I don't care if they wont ever sound as good as they can, anythings better than the mostly blown stock speakers that I had, and these sound heavenly compared to the old speakers in the car!

So I'm going to go buy a cheap 4 channel amp, hook it up, hide it, and enjoy my new speakers.

Even if I get a new amp its going to make the whole system sound a lot better than what it even does now with the new speakers, and a whole hell of a lot better than what it did.

 

You're getting some great feedback.

A 4-Channel is definately what you want. You can set the Amp front to back for a nice equal-sounding driver's experience. Too bad for your back-seat passengers.

Next, match the RMS of the amp to your rear ( 40W RMS ) speakers. A bit more is OK, but 60Wx4 will give you too much room to crank it up and harm your 40W RMS speakers.

Try to stay close to 40ish, or even a little less is still OK. Going higher will give you more power to play with but will enhance the lower quality signal of you HUnit ie; hiss/static so on.

When you set the AMP's balance front to rear, the rears will get most of your setting anyway, so the lesser watt fronts will be OK.

Any brand will suffice but the better-known brands actually put out what they rate them at, so be careful of 'cheap'. After 25 years of playing with car audio, I learned to spend the extra money and be happy with quality vs quantity.

I run 2 4channel Alpine AMPs in my regular cab pickup. They are under the bench seat and have never overheated.
Amps are 4x30W RMS ea with 4x50W @ 14.4Volts.
They run a pair of 50W composite fronts, 30W rears ( right behind our heads ), and a pair of 8" subs bridged able to take 150W RMS and get 120W ea @ 14.4Volts.

I have enough power to crank it up and it doesn't distort/hurt my ears.

 

Thats great info Gregzz4, I didn't think that it would overheat sitting under the passenger seat, even more so when for most of the time, I only drive the car about an hour everyday.

And even when I take trips its not that long, the longest trip I've taken is 2-3 hours, and I only turn on the speakers when I get bored, I like to listen to my cars own tune, the engine

I want to find an amp that will do something like 4x50watt and it would be perfect, I have a friend that offered me a 4 channel amp for $50, and I think I'm going to take him up on the offer.

I don't usually turn my radio up ALL the way anyway, after so far, probably about 80% or so actually, when you turn it up more it doesn't have any effect on the speakers.

So I just need something in all actuality to protect the speakers by making sure that they have the power that they need at all times.

Yeah I want to feel the speakers kick and they do, but I'm not looking to have the best audio system out there, I'm looking to have a better than stock sound experience, and well so far I've got that.

Now what I have to do is is make sure that these speakers don't suffer the same fate as the Delcos did originally, get blown

The front drivers side was toast, the passenger side front speaker wasn't too far behind it, and the rears were heavily distorted.

Now I have a clear audio system that doesn't produce anymore distortion than the old system did by any stretch of the imagination.

It sounds sweet at all power levels, even though when it does get cranked up, as expected, it sounds fuzzy and does have some distortion, but thats a combination of no amp and the stock head unit, but as I've said before, replacing it is out of the question.

One of my friends suggested replacing the radio filter to make the radio pick up the signals it gets easier and better.

Another one said to take it apart and clean it out, and well if I do that I can find and kill the dead/fuzzy spots on the volume control, and balancers.

Its going to be some work, but its all going to be to protect my investment, because I've already reached my original goals

 

Yes, cleaning the 'pots' will help with fuzzy/static tuning and volume, if you have twist *****, but I thought your stock deck had tuner buttons? Anyway...

You might want to just use the new speakers for awhile with the deck and no amp but take it easy. Save the money for now for something better?

Keep in mind the stock speakers, if like so many other entry-level speakers, may have only been 5, 7 or 10W ( example ), so they blew really easy.

Enjoy.

 

Well this is the radio that gets the privilege of controlling my new Pioneer speaker system.

What I'm talking about it cleaning them so that when I change the settings on the volume(turning it up and down) and the equalizers ( Front, Rear, Left, and Right) so that they work in every possible combination.

I never noticed it before but when I change the EQ settings in any which way, static interference is noticeable, and I've even found some "dead spots" where I can have one of the EQ's turned to a certain way and it affects the performance of the speakers.

I'm not sure what you mean by tuner buttons, unless your talking about the *****. The tuner **** does click to every odd frequency ( 88.3, 88.5, but never 88.4 etc....) but thats not the problem that I'm talking about.

The volume control is in pretty good shape but I know that if I could it would be worth my time to clean it and make sure that its operating the best that it can.

It would be interesting if I could find the Delco Service Shops or whatever that my manual talks about when it talks about servicing the radio, but I'm sure that I could find an audio shop somewhere that would know how to service the radio and have new components installed. New wiring as well as just a good cleaning and enhanced shielding and radio filters would make it perform better.

 

OK, now I see your 'pots'.
You have 2 combined pots controlling 4 things. Volume/Balance and Tuning/"bass/treble"? Picture is flashed out. Not important.
You may get good results cleaning the interior contacts.
If you can get some electrical cleaner and work them back and forth multiple times, when you have it apart, it should make a big difference.
Talk to the guys at a local stereo shop, ( not the Best Buy/Future Shop type ) auto or home, and see what they can sell you to clean the contacts in your 'pots'.
I'm talkin' the expert installer kind of guys.
Make sure you let it dry well before you plug it back in ( most contact cleaner air dries fast/evaporates ).
Good luck Bud.

 

Oops, missed the bass/treble sliders. They will clean up well too !!!!

 

Yeah its not the greatest picture but yeah it should be fun to take it apart one day and put it all back together, and its fun to learn how to do that kinda of stuff myself too.

I loved taking my interior apart this past weekend!

 

Ok so I got my Camaro bible today and it shows that the Delco-Bose radio system had an inline amplifier system, why can't I wire something like that into the system?

 

the bose system head units were not amplified and sent
a low-level signal to the amps built into each speaker.
(bose heads work well with standard add-on amps,but
the signal is faint,so amps need a lot of input gain-works
good though'84 bose head in my car)
For an amplified radio like yours,converters are avalible
to convert speaker output to low level rca jacks to feed
the amps.(or better yet,if anyone knows how,is to take
apart the radio and locate the preamp level inside the
radio in order to add preamp outputs to the radio-seen
that done,but i've never tried it)

 

I'm sure tha someone would know how to do it, I want to tear is apart anyway, haha.

 

Is this what I need to get? Will this work?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...d=390094344742

 

damn thats a good kit,

 

So all I have to do is wire that together and then the amp will plug right into it?

What about the amp? How will that itself work?