Hi,

I am looking at improving my stereo a bit. I have a few old bits of ice from previous cars and am wondering what will be the best combination???

Here is what I have avalible to use;

12 inch subwoofer in box

2 channel phoenix gold amp

infinity component speakers.

Sony head unit 1 x pre out

In the car currently there is a 'flat' Blaupunkt 100 w max sub mounted on the back of the rear seats.

I can't decide what to do, the components fit all the same fixing points as the front standard components.

Shall i amplify the front components with the PG amp and leave everything else the same or put the sub in and bridge the amp to run the sub??? and leave the in car speakers running off the head unit...

I don't want massive car shaking bass but want a bit more than i currently have. Would amplified components provide more bass than the standard components running off the standard head unit? if so loads more a bit more???

I don't want to spend much money and ideally don't want a big gash box in my boot - but could live with it i suppose...

Or what about amplifying the components and in the future buying a little 8 inch vibe to stick in the boot...

Any advice would be much appriciated.

Thanks

Rob

This is just how I would do it, and it's a bit unconventional. I'm sure most people's opinions would vary.

Provided the sub box is half decent, I would utilise that rather than a flat sub enclosure, BUT, I would run it from one set of outputs from the head unit - bridged. Most head units would handle that just fine.

To connect it up bridged you'll need to connect the + of the sub to the + of the right hand channel (say front right + on the head unit for arguments sake) and the - of the sub to the - of the left hand channel (front left - on the head unit. This may or may not work. If it does, it will free up that tidy little phoenix gold amp for the front components.

And rear speakers can be connected up as normal to the head unit.

You may have to experiment with the phase (polarity) of the subwoofer to get it working nicely though. Few people experiment with phase properly, instead preferring just to fit and forget. Many a car stereo system can often be improved just by flipping the polarity of the tweeter nearest the driver if they point miles away from the driver for instance.

Thanks for your reply. The head unit won't have enough power to run the sub. The sub is rated at something like 900w peak power and i'm sure the head unit isn't much above 200w if at all. So i still have the dilemma, do i use the amp for the sub or the components????

i would say have the speakers running on the headunit for now and maybe in the future put an amp to it as the cars stock speaker wiring aint the best in the world and bridge the amp to the sub but whats the power of the amp ?? as u can simply turn the bass down on the amp to how u want it providing the amp can feed the right power to the amp as i have a 500watt rms amp with a 300watt rms sub which i know is abit too much power but i just simply turn the power down and its perfect