Affordable Amps?

[Bugsi]

. . .I hate taking the door panels off though. Its a pain.

No, it's not a pain. What part of removing the door panels are you concerned about? You can seriously improve your sound if you get into the doors and do some work on the speakers. You can upgrade your speakers to better models, and seal up the gaps between the speaker mounting points with some weatherstripping.

Tell us what part troubles you and we'll give you the how-to information to walk you through it. It's actually really easy.

[3800SERIESII]

It is just those clips that hold the panel on. Some go in, some dont, then they rattle or some of them break. Also, what process would I have to go through to amplify the front speakers too with a 4 channel amp mounted under the rear deck?

[RogueSSEi]

Stay away from Dual. Go Kicker, JL, Sony, JBL, Kenwood just to name a few of the known brands for "more bang for the buck". You could do some research on some higher end competition equipment, like MMATS, Image Dynamic, Diamond Audio, and Phoenix to name a few.

[Bugsi]

For advice like "Stay away from Brand X", it would be useful to state why. I worked for several years as an audio amplifier repair technician and modern audio amplifiers are very much cookie-cutter devices, where one is much like another. There *are* reasons to stay away from certain brands, as some have absolutely horrible build quality using very *very* cheap quality parts and construction, and blatantly lie on the packaging about the power and noise specifications. At the other end of the spectrum some are made to well beyond military-grade specifications, are conservatively rated, and command top-dollar. I do recommend sticking with quality name brands. I have all Alpine amplifiers in my car and I'm very happy with those.

The inner door panels come off relatively easily if you know where the mounting bolts and the plastic fasteners are. Remove the bolts and carefully pry around the edges at the fasteners with a trim removal pry-tool and you shouldn't have any problems.

Wiring a trunk amp to the door speakers can be done a couple of ways. There is a cheap installer shortcut that many installers use. Presume for the sake of example that you put a 4-channel amp in the trunk. You run new speaker wires directly from the amp to the rear speakers, since they're all right there in the trunk. Then you re-use the factory rear speaker wires in reverse, by connecting the ends that used to go to the rear speakers to the amplifier's *front* speaker *outputs*, and up at the dashboard at the radio wiring harness you *disconnect* both the door and rear speaker wires and connect them together so the left rear wires are joined to the left door speaker wires and the right rear wires are joined to the right door speaker wires. I have a diagram of that somewhere, if I can find it I'll post it. [Edit: Here you go:]


The other way is to run new speaker wires from the trunk up the wiring harness channels under the door sills up to the footwell kickplates and up through the wiring harness sheaths into the door. I've done that too, and on your year Bonneville that's not a terribly difficult job either. [Edit: My current system, red and black wires are line-outputs from the head unit, blue and green wires are speaker wires:]

[Kevin445730]

Awesome stuff guys! Now is Hifonics a brand to stay away from? They offer a big 6x9 with some promising stats. Then theres head units is Alpine a good choice for quality and clarity? Lets discuss more about good reputable brand names for h/u, speakers, amps and subs.

[RogueSSEi]

Awesome stuff guys! Now is Hifonics a brand to stay away from? They offer a big 6x9 with some promising stats. Then theres head units is Alpine a good choice for quality and clarity? Lets discuss more about good reputable brand names for h/u, speakers, amps and subs.

You gonna get what you pay for.
Kenwood, kicker, alpine, pioneer, jvc......ftw

[Kevin445730]

Anybody else a fan of Boston Acoustics?

[Bugsi]

Anybody else a fan of Boston Acoustics?

Well I am, as you can tell by my speaker set up diagrams above, which are the speakers I have in my Bonneville. But I got a JL when I added a sub. The current lines of Boston Acoustics speakers seem to be awfully expensive. When I bought new speakers for our Odyssey van I auditioned some Bostons and some Infinities and some Polks and I went with the Polks. They sounded better and cost less. At some point those two factors should be important. But prices vary wildly and new models are always coming out. If I found a good deal on some good sounding Bostons I'd totally buy them again.