GEN 2 Upgrading Speakers & Subwoofer

thorleif said:

How did you like this? local shop suggested starting with stealthbox and deciding if that's enough and just bearing with the Sony speakers.

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Update - I retuned the 13TW5v2 stealth box today (gain and pass frequency) and it sounds great! It hits way harder than I expected and I'm very happy with the outcome.


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Has anyone done just a speaker upgrade? If so what did you go with?
I have several upgrades in the works but I feel like I should just upgrade the door speakers for the time being and not mess with the sub or amp. I am thinking Hertz or Focal but I dont have experience with either. My last truck had Polk 651's and I really liked the sound of those although the bass was lacking. I tried some Kickers and they had better bass but did not sound as clear as the Polks.

Check out Guy’s thread about the sub 500 upgrade in this forum. He went with the Panasonic A series front/back/pillar. I’ve used Polk before with great results, but the A series look like they have great range and numerically seem to be pretty solid. I’m planning on that myself as funds permit.

If you’ve got the factory sub, follow Guy’s plan. I did just the sub and really like the added bass punch. Guy went with the Pana. sub too, better range, less power. I went with the Kicker - more power, not as much range. I am not disappointed.

You can spend less than 500 and be fine. Or, you can redo the whole system and be poor.

smurfslayer said:

]

If you’ve got the factory sub, follow Guy’s plan. I did just the sub and really like the added bass punch. Guy went with the Pana. sub too, better range, less power. I went with the Kicker - more power, not as much range. I am not disappointed.

You can spend less than 500 and be fine. Or, you can redo the whole system and be poor.

Click to expand...

So you just did the kicker powered sub upgrade? Which model did you get?


Just a plug and play with the unpowered one ?

http://www.fordraptorforum.com/f266/added-sub-52819/

Guy used this as a starting point. Again, Guy deviated from the original plan with a different (corrected: Pioneer) Sub that has more range, but is a (?) 4 ohm so is not quite as powerful with the Kenwood amp. Plus, Guy saw how on the engine sub-forum I was susceptible to influence and concocted a plan to spend my money for me. You can blame Guy if you install the sub and think to yourself ‘hey, this sounds great, I should change the speakers!’


The link to the F150 forum has all the how to in it.
- pull the sub box - so easy, a trained monkey can do it.
- remove factory sub. you don’t even need a trained monkey, so easy, a US Fed gov worker could do this.
<beer. I like a pale, belgian farmhouse, or possibly a saison for this step>
- use heat gun or blow torch to melt and reshape factory sub box. Although fire is cool, it is not the objective of this exercise. If you’re a pyro, or suffer pyromaniacal tendencies, find another outlet. heat, reshape to fit the new sub, cool it and reassemble.
- wire in the amp. You can jump the inverter wire behind the seat on the other side. Grab a ground close to the amp, there are plenty available. secure amp, again, plenty of options, use your imagination. get speaker signal from factory sony amp connections.
<beer. I like a porter, Guinness, Dunkel or Belgian dark for this step>
smoke test. If you power everything up and the truck doesn’t catch fire, adjust the gain, and hz. to your taste.
Test with multiple songs, genres etc.
<bourbon. Bowman, Makers, Woodford, Wild Turkey, Four Roses - there are no bad choices with bourbon>

Enjoy more bass.

it’s that easy.

smurfslayer said:

Check out Guy’s thread about the sub 500 upgrade in this forum. He went with the Panasonic A series front/back/pillar. I’ve used Polk before with great results, but the A series look like they have great range and numerically seem to be pretty solid. I’m planning on that myself as funds permit.

If you’ve got the factory sub, follow Guy’s plan. I did just the sub and really like the added bass punch. Guy went with the Pana. sub too, better range, less power. I went with the Kicker - more power, not as much range. I am not disappointed.

You can spend less than 500 and be fine. Or, you can redo the whole system and be poor.

Click to expand...

Just to make sure no one gets confused, I'm pretty sure you inadvertently wrote "Panasonic" when it should be "Pioneer" for the components Guy used...

thanks LD - I did a post edit as well.

Yep.

All Pioneer A series. It was all inspired by Smurfs post. So really he's responsible for me spending my money which now has him spending more money. So it all goes back to him really.

The subwoofer mod is much improved over stock.
It has more depth, more punch, and will get the mirrors rattling if you crank it up.

Replacing the other speakers with pioneer proved to be a great upgrade. To appreciate it the most, high definition radio or CD quality sound really comes to life. Sirius satellite and anything through blue tooth just loses a ton of dynamic range.

The stereo is clear, the snare drums pop - and the symbels crash. The only downside is that there is no downside! It'll cost you just under 500 to do the sub upgrade and all the speakers.

All the flat factory muddy sound goes away and so does the weird clipping at high volumes.

Stereo went from being mediocre to downright pleasant.

Does anyone have a high end audio shop they recommend in phoenix?

The Car Stereo Company said:

you need to get the signal after the factory amp. that way the oem features are still active. a sound processor is always the best option, but you can use hi/low converters. you just wont get the cleanest signal. theres a lot you can do the the oem system and retain all the features it came with

Click to expand...

http://www.2gfusions.net/showthread.php?tid=3704

Totally flat signal, they scoped it on diyca to confirm.
All factory processing, including that rascally volume dependent eq, is gone.
Forscan is solid gold !