What would happen if I wired both the right speakers and both the left speakers in parallel, only using the front 4x6's? Would this double the wattage from 45x4 to 90x2? Would it decrease quality? Does ohmage matter?

 

It would seriously degrade SQ, and probably fry your head unit as well. Most head units use OP amps which have enough of a hard time driving a 4 ohm load, let alone 2ohms. Do the right thing, save the money to buy a good system and do it.

 

How would that degrade sound quality? I thought the more watts you could give a speaker, the better quality it would put out. Also, can't you get 8 ohm 4x6's so that it would lower the resistance to the normal 4 ohms?

 

Head unit amps are not designed to be bridged, and without going into a long winded discussion about it, SQ would be degraded since the tiny onboard amp of the head unit would be producing more distortion. As resistence drops, current increases. If the amp cannot keep up, it 'clips' the wave form, producing seriously crappy sound, and putting your speakers in danger. Yes, there are 8ohm speakers out there, but going this route, you are back where you started, except you are losing your rear speakers. My reply was simply if you want louder and clearer sound, do it right and buy an amp, or risk having to replace speakers and maybe a head unit too. Small amps aren't all that expensive, and you will get a HUGE improvement in sound and volume. Trust me on this, and consider a day and about $100 spent installing an amp, or a couple of days and more money spent replacing blown speakers, perhaps a head unit, and then an amp to get what you were after in the first place.

 

experience:

Put a headunit in a 91 lebaron. Has dash, door (Front channels)and rear speakers. When i put bass blockers on the 3" dash speakers, the headunit kept turning off.

In your case, your doing like what i did cept with mroe power and less resistence and that still aint good. 4x6's cant take that much anyways ....

 

You will let the smoke out of your radio and it is expensive to put the magic smoke back in.

 

about 2 months ago i asked this same question.

then did it anyway and it worked but you lose all fader and balance control.

i later just ran all 4 speakers off of my 2 ch amp. still not the correct way but sounds much better and louder and the amp shows no signs of heating up etc. still no fade .

if you can get another amp for the front i will as soon as i can and
that is the best way to do it.

hope i could help.

 

You need to look at the original question, if he described it correctly he is not talking about 4 speakers ran off 2 channels,(which is a bad idea for a head unit, but fine for most amps)
he described running only one pair of 4x6 and combining all 8 speaker wires from the head unit to have in effect only 4 speaker wires
DON'T DO IT

 

yes you can do it and it wont hurt the quality at all. you will lose front to back fade thats it

 

you CANNOT do it off of a head unit. you will kill your head unit. head units are meant to handle an 8 ohm load, nothing lower.

 

plus the headunits power is like only about 18-24W RMS.... 45W peak... i'd definently look into an amp for all 4 speakers... check Crutchfield... the US Acoustics USX4065... 65Wx4 for $139.95... OR... USX4085... 85Wx4 for $189.95