factory amp?? wtf

[callee11]

Ok so I put my clarion in today and was noticing that the factory door speakers sounded like shit... I know all factory speakers suck but I have never heard factory speakers so quiet and distorted when turned 3/4 of the way up... I am wondering if its being caused by the factory amp cause I don't really have bass running through them and they are distorted as hell and quiet.... I also installed my fosgate 12 tonight with only about 200 w rms running to it completley drowns out my door speakers... can't hear the voices at all (and im always hearing voices) so..... anyone run into this prob? Its a 97. With "premium" sound... im just basically wondering if to fix this I have to get 4 door speakers and a four channel amp? Im planning on fosgate 4x6 doors anyways but wasn't planning on the amp and wasn't planning to have to do it right now lol

 

[Thermo]

callee, you have to look at the power output of the new aftermarket radio. If you have a high power aftermarket radio, yes, it can do what you are seeing. The best thing at that point is to bypass the amp and power the speakers directly off of the radio.

 

[callee11]

That's what I would like to do but I don't even know where the factory ampis or how to bypass it.... the hu is a 50x4 max not sure on rms but yeah that's what I was wondering is if I need to bypass the amp location? Any easy way to do it?

 

[Thermo]

Callee, no, while this is maybe the "harder way", I find it much easier. I would tell you to simply cut the whole amp out of the circuit and run new wires from the radio to the door speakers. Speaker wire is dirt cheap these days and it will save a lot of "am I connecting the correct wires together.

As for power, a 50Wx4 radio outputs 22W(RMS)x4. So, that will give you something to play with. 16 guage wiring will be more than enough to get the power out to your speakers if you go with all new wiring. The hard part of running the new wiring is getting it through the boot in the door. For that, what I have found that works great is getting your hands on a phillips screw driver that is about 16" long. Then you can tape the end of the wire to the end of the screw driver, push the screw driver through the boot (preferable to remove the boot from each end) and then once you push the screw driver through, you can undo the tape and pull as much wiring through as needed. The boots go back into the steel openings really easy.

 

[callee11]

Ok cool... thanks for the info buddy... I played with it awhile this am and got it to sound a lil better.... I was thinking that it would be easiest to just run new wires so that's what im gonna do but I think im gonna deal with this now till I get the $$ for fosgate 4x6 in the doors just do it all at once..... I do have another? Tho... are bass blockers any good? I used them back in the day but they didn't seem to b very effective... maybe they are better now? Cause I really don't wanna have to run a 4 channel amp and crossover but I can't deal with distorted highs and mids...

 

[Thermo]

callee, get the right amp and it will have a built in crossover than you can set up to be a high band pass crossing over at say 180 Hz. That should do everything for you and not require any additional components. Sure, you can put in a bass blocker, all it would be is a single capacitor on each speaker. If you need me to calculate out the capacitance for a given crossover frequency, let me know. I know how to do that.

 

[callee11]

Yeah im going back and forth on the 4ch idea... im just broke so ill have to shop around.... but I listen to mainly metal music... wife listens to occasional rap so we need some hard bass sometimes but med sometimes lol.... we are all over the place but highs and miss have to be good so I don't know what im gonna do yet lol but ill def get ahold of you when I figure it out.... again thanks forall the help