After a number of starts and stops where I had an amp going into protect mode, and no sound from the woofer, my Tang Band sub is finally in and....
Me likey!
When I bought the car in October, it had the stock GM AM/FM non-cassette stereo. I replaced it with the Pioneer DEHP47DH. It's $240, but I was able to find one, new-in-the-box on eBay for $80 shipped.
That soon revealed stock front 4x10's whose gaskets had turned to dust a long time ago. I replaced them with some cheap, no-name replacements from Pep Boys ($32). I want them to be mid-range, which they do okay. The response isn't quite there, as the rear 4x6's really shine. I have no idea what these 4x6's are, as I've not yet dug that deep. Still, with some proper fading to balance things out, a nice sound stage is created. But the bottom was really lacking.
So I followed the steps in this post:
https://www.fiero.nl/forum/Forum2/HTML/081643.html I ordered a Tang Band sub from Parts Express ($33), and the sub housing from The Fiero Store ($19). I have to say, I love those folks at The Fiero Store. They are really kind and the shipping is fast and reasonable. Once I had all the parts, I cut out an adapter for the sub and filled the housing with poly stuffing from the Hobby Lobby ($3).
I picked this up ($55) from a local store we have in these parts called The Wal-Mart...
I wanted the Xtant amp listed in the post. But they aren't easy to find. I was concerned the Dual may have too much power for the sub. But when I read the specs and realized the max wattage was listed at a 14v input, I realized I'm probably safe. Besides, it's distortion that kills speakers more than power.
So I bridged the amp, wired everything up, and added an aux input to the head unit to hook up to my iPod.
I was so excited to test it out, only to discover the amp was shutting itself down. I traced this issue down to crappy speaker wire and not enough juice. Ok, I should know this. But I'm going to pass it on to the rest of you: Connect the amp directly to the battery, with a solid ground, and an inline fuse not more than a few inches from the battery. Use quality speaker wire ($12). This is Amp Hook-Up 101. Right? Right.
So I did all of this and still, no sound. I investigated some more and found my home system could create sound with the subwoofer, but only when it was out of the stock subwoofer box. A little more prying revealed speaker tabs that were grounding themselves out on the inner metal frame of the subwoofer box. Ahhhhhh, I seeeee said the blind man just before he fell down the steps.
So some strategically wrapped electrical tape later, I had everything back together and within moments was out in my car, ready to jam. I hoped.
And jam it did. The stereo sounds really, really nice. I flipped through some various genres of music to balance out the input level, sub level, fader, etc. But once dialed in, the sound is really nice. The highs from the rear are nice and clear, there's enough mid to low high from the front speakers to create some aura, and the bottom is filled in very nicely from the Tang Band sub.
So for around $220 the sound in the car is nice and deep. The sound outside the car is nothing special. Which is perfect, since I'm nearly two decades out of my teens, wear my ballcap with the bill dead centered on my head, keep my pants at my waist, and am not trying to pick up sluts at the mall.
Cheers! And thanks to all with the ideas for this set-up and to those who took the time to answer my questions as I had my
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Spent my days with a woman unkind Smoked my stuff and drank all my wine...
