Sorry this isn't for an F-body, but not sure where else to ask this.

I have a good friend who is looking to redo the system in his 99 Grand Marquis. A few years back, Circuit City did an install that follows; Kenwood Excelon KDC-X979 headunit, Polk GXR 5x7's out back and 5 1/4"'s up front, a pair of busted 10" Polk subs being pushed by a MTX Thunder 4202 amp (looks like at 2 ohms). The mids/highs are being pushed by the head unit.

He complains that the music sounds "seperated". The high's are too high, very little mids, and decent bass. He listens to all types of music, from Classical to Rap and everything in between. He wants the music to sound "as one". Kind of hard to explain, but you get my drift.

Crutchfield says that the openings are 6x8's out back, not sure why there are 5x7's in there. The sub box is a sealed encloser that is 1.5 cubic feet total (.75 feet per 10" sub). The headunit looks like a nice piece 50x4 watts with 5.0 volt preamps.

So the questions. What are good spearkers for the mids and high's? Should I run a seperate 4 channel amp for them? If so which one? Is the MTX amp he has now good enough to drive better 10" subs? What would be good subs for this enclosure? Do I need seperate EQ for him to dial in how he wants the music to sound?

Budget $500-$1000

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Thanks,

Doug D

 

I have been out of the car audio scene for awhile so i couldnt recommend a brand but i would suggest a good 6.5" component set and a quality amp...As for the subs checkout www.adireaudio.com

 

All you should need is a decent sub set up that is matched to a decent set of components. Since you are in FL, I would say check out the FL forum cause there's a thread in there about some MBQuart components FS in there. I would highly recommend these speakers, I have a set of them and they sound amazing. I have 2 Kicker 10"s and it's a very well balanced system. As for an EQ, you shouldn't need one, just get an amp for the subs that has a crossover and play around with the the cutoff frequency/level. The MBQuart's (if you go with those) come with a crossover. You may need to run an external amp for some components, just need to check the speakers and head unit power capabilities.

As for your friend's setup, they probably have 5" x 7"s installed because there's a much better selection of that size of speaker than a 6" x 8", but you could always just cut a little to fit a 6" x 9" for some rear fill speakers. To get what your friend's looking for, just come up with a plan before you start. I was looking for the same thing as him I think, nothing that will win a competition or anything, but something affordable that would sound good with either Mozart or Dr. Dre or Whitesnake. My MBQuart's (QM218.03CX) components are up front, and are very very nice sounding but did require a lot of power so they got their own amp. They are very good sounding but only on the high end. The Pioneer 6" x 9" 4-ways help to fill in the mid-range and the Kicker Solo-Baric 10"s make it bump. The head unit is a Sony CDX-M670.

For the budget that you're working with you should be able to put together a kick *** system that sounds great for what your friend's looking for.

Abe