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Help me pick some speakers, quick!

Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 12:23 am
by DanteGTZ
It just dawned on me that the speakers currently in my 1993 GTZ sound like crap. I'd like to replace them before the road trip to Bfest next week. Looking at Best Buy, I'm leaning towards the Kicker CS stuff (but I'm open to suggestion). Price seems decent and they have been out long enough to get really good reviews. My head unit is an old Alpine CDA-9855 from 2005 or so, but it still sounds excellent and has good power output. Alright, so the questions are:

What size front speakers do I go with? Stick with 4x6 in the factory mounted position? Go with 5.25" or 6.5" and mount them on the face of the kickpanel? It looks like most 5.25" speakers don't have a grill so mounting them on top of the kickpanel might be difficult.

How about the rear speaker installation? I'm going to stick with 6x9s but was curious what the best method for installing them was? I can't remember how we mounted the 6x9s in my other GTZ years ago (long since sold). All I remember was they were mounted on top of the rear deck and the magnet sunk down in the deck. Is there a tried and true method for installing 6x9s on these cars? Do I need to cut material out of the way?

Thanks!

Re: Help me pick some speakers, quick!

Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 4:54 am
by Slinky
I run Alpine type R speakers, I love the quality for the price. I have 6.5 inch speakers in the front mounted on my kick panels, which sadly vet kicked often, but they have a caged protector on the speaker..
The rear I have my 6x9 speakers mounted on top of the metal of the rear deck, I cut my rear deck fabric panel out and put trim on it to clean it up.

Re: Help me pick some speakers, quick!

Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 6:28 am
by Money pit Beretta
Kickers would need an amp to sound just ok. Really they are junk. Like my Hertz low cost 6x9's(there are some higher priced ones), but they need an amp too. Don't sound too bad without though. All and all if you have an EQ you can make just about anything sound nice. If your phone has one then your set if that is where your music is coming from. A basic EQ is better than nothing.

These days it's all about a tweet and a super tweet. Most music gets depth from the mid range so a super tweet is useless, also they go to a range that you can't hear anyway. Strange how most speakers(even bookshelf home speakers) leave out mid range drivers. Blame THX for that...crashing highs and ultra low lows. A nice set of 6-6.5's for the front covers that some. Less the fact that your legs get in the way for those of us with kick panels. The on the dash like you have are the best. Just a bit hard to find a good set of speakers in that size.

Just try and get a true 3 way 6x9. The bigger the mid the better. They call tweet and super tweet speakers 3 way so watch out. Or later down the road you can add a mid range speaker and just go with 2 way 6x9's. You can never go wrong with a driver/speaker for each range as long as they are good quality.
Hear some good things about Cadence speakers, but the 6x9's don't go very low. Need to have a sub to cover that.

If there was more time I'd send you my Kickers for free. Yes that is how much I don't like them. That would be mean though and I like you. :)

Re: Help me pick some speakers, quick!

Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 8:34 am
by themixer
honestly I would just go get some cheap stock paper 6x9s from a impala, and if you find a cavalier it has the 4x6 speakers you need for the front. You will probably be more than happy with the sound output and hopefully they would not cost much.

Re: Help me pick some speakers, quick!

Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 9:14 am
by 3X00-Modified
My car has like 20yr old Boston Acoustics speakers... I still like them... lol

Re: Help me pick some speakers, quick!

Posted: Wed Jun 15, 2016 9:48 am
by heavywoody
I've got the stock ones from the 96 Z you can have... I'll try to make sure they are there and work (somehow).

Re: Help me pick some speakers, quick!

Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 5:04 pm
by DanteGTZ
I've not bought anything just yet but am trying to do my homework to see what might work. I don't really want to run a sub in this car and I think a coaxial speaker setup will work just fine for my needs. Only problem is finding the right speaker. My head unit is an old Alpine CDA-9855. 18w RMS which seems to still be the modern standard. Luckily it looks like Alpine makes a plug-n-play in-line amp (KTP-445A) which will boost power to 45w RMS x4 channels. Getting better, but a lot of the mid-quality speakers I'm seeing are all calling for +60watts RMS. Can someone give me some info on this -- What critical is it to match the RMS rating of the speakers? I _really_ do not want to bother with a large external amp just to power some 6.5 and 6x9 speakers. Not gonna happen in this particular car.

What to do???

Re: Help me pick some speakers, quick!

Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 9:24 pm
by 3X00-Modified
You don't have to meet the rms value... Obviously the speakers will perform a bit better when matched but I doubt you'll notice a huge difference. I however have an external amp running my speakers as well as a sub amp but I've since removed the subs.. Not sure if I'll replace them or not quite yet. I'm happy with how it sounds for now.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

Re: Help me pick some speakers, quick!

Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 9:33 pm
by DanteGTZ
Coax or components? What size fronts and rears are you using Jon? I'm looking at 6.5" for the fronts and sticking with 6x9s for the rears. I doubt I'll go with any subs.

Re: Help me pick some speakers, quick!

Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2016 8:38 am
by 3X00-Modified
I have tiny fronts, they fit the stock speaker location. They are not component speakers either. The rears are 6x9's

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

Re: Help me pick some speakers, quick!

Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2016 9:55 pm
by DanteGTZ
In the interest of time, I decided to bag the upgrade ideas and just bought some new 4x6s to replace the bad ones in the kickpanels. Just need some jams for the road trip.