honestlou ^^^ good info ^^^

[ciff claven] A bit of trivia ~ the company I was an area manager for (I was in charge of the Houston stores) was in that business (mostly car stereo but some home stereo and a bit of video) and we had a store on Florida Blvd in BR in the late 70's through mid 80's. ...until Joe Schaab at New Gen overpowered us. [/cliff claven]

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
honestlou ^^^ good info ^^^

[ciff claven] A bit of trivia ~ the company I was an area manager for (I was in charge of the Houston stores) was in that business (mostly car stereo but some home stereo and a bit of video) and we had a store on Florida Blvd in BR in the late 70's through mid 80's. ...until Joe Schaab at New Gen overpowered us. [/cliff claven]

Who were you with? Rex? Sound Advice? I'm trying to think of who was in the business back then.

Allstar Audio

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
Allstar Audio

I remember Allstar

New generation got all our money back then

quote:

Originally posted by honestlou:
Sorry for the delay in getting back, but just didn't have time. I've been trying to get some info on your car, which frankly can be a dumpster fire as for the stereo system. You will be able to add a subwoofer, regardless, but you may not be able to add the other amp. Keeping fingers crossed, is your system the non-JBL amplified system with 9 speakers?

If you can get to the amp under the driver's seat, there should be at least two plugs. One should have the main power and ground wires, which should be larger than most of the wires on the amp. The other plug will have the speaker wires, typically twisted pairs (you may not be able to see the twist at the plug). Is that second plug a 10 pin plug? If that plug is 10 pins, and you have 9 speakers, then you're in pretty good shape. If that plug is 30 pin, and you have 11 speakers, then this is most likely not a do-it-yourself job, even for an advanced do-it-yourselfer. Frankly, it's not a job for most stereo shops, and you probably don't want to do anything other than add a sub.

Let me know what you have, and I'll make recommendations from there.

I have one plug with 8 pins/wires, and another with 12 pins/wires. I'm 98% sure it's the 9 speaker, amplified, NON-JBL system; nothing says "JBL" on it. Seems there's 3 in the dash, one in each of the 4 doors, and 2 in the rear deck, from what I can see. Hopefully this link to the pics of the plugs/pins/wires works.
https://imgur.com/a/oiJbKc2
I VERY much appreciate your help and expertise, thanks for taking the time! Hopefully, you saw my secondary posts with more questions!

You should not need a line output converter (LOC) for the Alpine amp, as it will handle up to 10 volts of input, and I doubt seriously that the factory amp is putting out any more than that. You can test by playing music, pink noise, or a 50 hz tone, and measure the AC voltage you are getting on one of the factory amp's output chnnels.

The Rockford amp you have for the sub has a speaker level input plug, but the specs don't say how much power it can handle. I will try to call tomorrow and get that info. If it is not adequate, then you will need a LOC for that.

You can catch the speaker outputs from the factory amp, cut those wires, and use the output from that amp as the input to the Alpine amp. Wire the output from the Alpine amp to the other side-the wires going to the factory speakers. There is no need to change that wire, as it is more than sufficient for what you are doing. Read the installation instructions for the Alpine amp very carefully, as it is pretty tricky on how to bridge it to two channels. From memory it uses the left front and rear for one channel, and the right front and rear for the other. + from one and - from the other, and it may not be the same for both sides. Just read carefully. And once you've confirmed that your input voltage will be less than 10 volts, then you just cut off the RCAs and wire the speaker output from the amp directly onto those wires.

As for door speakers, I prefer these Alpines to the Infinity:

https://www.crutchfield.com/p_...ne-S-S65.html?tp=105

Same price, a little better power handling, and they are 4 ohm speakers. Speakers are personal preference, but I've never been a big fan of Infinity, and their lower impedance could cause you a problem with the amp. In your situation you are going to keep the factory tweeter as well, so you shouldn't have an issue with the high end. You need to confirm that the factory tweeters have caps on them to block out the lower frequencies. I'm fairly confident they will, but you should confirm this.

Also, you have a little sticky situation with your center channel speaker in the dash. The information I have is that it does not have distinct wiring, but is tied in to the front left and right speakers. I'm guessing it's a dual voice coil speaker. This causes two potential problems. We need to make sure that the each channel of the amp is seeing 4 ohms resistance, which you can measure. It could be lower if the center channel is wired in parallel. Also, we don't know if the center channel is capped (for crossover), or if it would handle the power of the new amp. For all of these reasons, and more, I'd suggest disconnecting the center channel speaker. Unfortunately, if it's wired the way I think, you'll have to disconnect it at the speaker. This may be simple or difficult-I don't know how it comes out-hopefully from the top.

You can place the Alpine amp under the front seat, and make your connections there. I'd probably recommend just running an independent wire to the battery for it, 12 gauge is sufficient. You certainly could put your distribution block there, but I think that would be more trouble than it's worth to run the 4 gauge wire to that location, and back out to the Rockford amp in the trunk. If you have plenty of room and want to do that, that's perfectly fine. It may also depend on what side you need to come through the firewall with the 4 gauge from the battery, as you won't have enough cable and don't want to be crossing sides.

If you can access the speakers in the rear deck, you can catch signal there for the sub amp. If you can't easily get to them, then you can catch them at the amp, or use the same outputs that are going to the Alpine amp. You will leave the back speakers playing off the factory amp.

I think I've covered everything. Let me know if anything is unclear, or if I've left a question unanswered.

I emailed you some wiring info I have on your vehicle. Of course we always try to verify, but it seems to match up to what I saw in the photos you linked.

I just talked to Rockford tech support, and they said that the speaker level input can handle up to 12 volts. So you should not need a LOC for it either. Let me know if you understand what I've given you, or if you have any other questions. If you need to talk it through, I'd be happy to talk by phone as well.

Lou, you've been absolutely splendid, thank you SO much! The only question I can think of at present is about the actual sub.

I know you mentioned my sub is sub-par (good pun, BTW!). It is dual 4ohm voice coils. Given the amp I have, should I stick with one sub, or can I go two, with different sizes to get a wider frequency range? Either way, what sub (s) would you recommend for a good performance to price balance? Thanks!

I did forget to ask you again about which version of that sub you had. The problem is that you have a dual 4 ohm voice coil, so wired in parallel it will yield a 2 ohm load. Your amp puts out 500 watts RMS at 2 ohms, and the woofer is only rated for 200 watts RMS. You may be able to keep the gains on the amp low enough to make it usable, but not necessarily, and it's very far from ideal.

You could wire the two voice coils in series, yielding 8 ohms, but the amp may not put out enough usable power at 8 ohms. One solution is to get a second identical sub, wire them each in series, and then parallel together, which would result in a 4 ohm load to the amp. Then you'd have 300 watts from the amp, or 150 watts to each sub, which is about where you should be with those subs. This is probably the most economical way to go since you already own the one sub.

If you wanted to spend a little more money and do better, buy a single 4 ohm sub that's rated for 300 watts, like a JL 10W0V34 ($120) or JL 10W1V34 ($210). Or a 2 ohm sub that's rated for 500 watts, like a JL 10W3V32($300). I sell and like JL Audio, but they are a bit pricey. Those are retail prices, and they just recently had a price increase, so you may find them at lower prices. I can tell you that one JL W3 will outperform two of the Rockford subs you have.

Without making a specific recommendation, Memphis, Kicker, and Rockford all make quality subs. Just look at the RMS power rating to know what you're getting.

Lastly, I don't know how you picked the sub you have, but it is unlikely that you need a shallow mount sub. If you do, I'd recommend the JL for that as well. They a few series of shallow mounts that are really outstanding.

Yeah I originally bought that sub for my Suburban, because it fit in the recommended CF size box under the rear seat, which I wanted in order to leave my trunk space open for family travels. Now that I have the minivan for the family, the tunes go in my commuter ride.