Speakers

[occupant]

I'm going to make the assumption that this wagon I'm looking at has a stock Ford stereo with factory speakers in the dash (Crutchfield says 4" speakers will fit) and out back (Crutchfield says they are 6" x 8").

I want a factory looking deck (lots of black, little if any silver, green or blue lighting, 2 big knobs would be nice, retro > *) with either MP3 CD playback or a front-mounted auxiliary input (for my 1GB Shuffle), but there's no way to do that with any single-DIN sized Ford offerings. I'm looking at 3 stereos to put in, all in the $80-$120 range.

Pioneer DEH-1900MP...this has green button illumination and a white LCD display


Kenwood KDC-MP235...red button illumination, light blue LCD display


Kenwood KDC-MP2035...blue knob illumination, red button illumination, light blue LCD display


I can't find many differences between the two Kenwoods, maybe $5 in price if that. I'd probably take the 2035 over the 235 since it has less red. I don't like red lights but blue is ok, so that's a trade-off, but if the rest of the dash lights up green like I think it would, I'd want that Pioneer. All three of these have an input on the face AND play MP3 burned CD's, so even if I forget my Shuffle, I can use CD's stashed in the visor wallet or glovebox or whatever.

As for speakers, if I go with the Pioneer deck I'll get Pioneers, and likewise with one of the Kenwoods. Are the dash speakers difficult to change out? I assume dash pad removal is required? Might be a good excuse to find a very nice blue dash pad to go in. Am I limited to 79-87 CV's and GM's for this part? Or will 88-91 pads fit, too? How about Town Cars, do those pads interchange as well?

[p71towny]

Towncar pads wont interchange, and yes the dash is 4". But the magnets need to be somewhat shallow to fit. I cant comment on the rear speakers cause I think wagons did get 6x8s where sedans got 6x9s in the back. Just pop the pad off and your good to go.

[85crownHPP]

I don't like red lights but blue is ok, so that's a trade-off, but if the rest of the dash lights up green like I think it would, I'd want that Pioneer.

it does, but you can change that. go for the blue!!!!

[boXman]

You definately need 6x8s to reuse the factory grilles in the back. 6x9s wont fit on them. Find 3.5" with small magnets for the dash if you can. There's no room in there, it sucks.

[marquisman]

go pioneer dude! i got 4700MPs in the linc and merc, awsome decks...for the mercs front speakers are rockford 4" speakers, and they fit awsome!

[gadget73]

Xplods tend to be overly bright and lack bass. They're fine if you have subs but lack somewhat otherwise. I have Boston Acoustics in the dash, which have nice clean highs and mids. The Rockford Fosgates in the doors have good mids, OK highs, and the Kenwoods in the back are all treble really. They're kind of flat elsewhere, and I wouldn't mind replacing them. My Pioneer subs are a bit too boomy for my liking, but the box sucks so I dont really blame the speakers as much as the box. I want a sealed box to clean the bass up but its not on the top of my priority list.

[saiyaneye]

Pioneer is more of a respected brand than Kenwood. What are your budget on speakers? Even though I hate rear fill speakers, I would spend more on your 6" x 9" speakers because you can get more output from them than you could on your 4" speakers you can fit in the dash. Are you going to amp these speakers?

[Blaze86Vic]

I'd say Kenwood is a far better brand, but that's just opinion. 4" is incapable of putting out any significant bass, ESPESIALY in the dash. I do have a set of damn nice speakers for the dash that I'm not using anymore since I went to 6-1/2" components in the doors. The 4"s that I have are 2-way JVC Polypropylene cone 100 watt max (50 watt RMS), 4 ohms. I have pics if you are interested. They are in mint condition, except for the mounting hardware which I modified to adapt to the odd ball 3 screw mount of these cars.

[saiyaneye]

I still beg to differ about Kenwood being better than Pioneer with headunits. Speakers Coaxials and Components I can almost say Kenwood is better or equal with Pioneer, subs I think not. Try Pioneer scoring 178.3 DB in DB Drag last year in Extreme 5+ class. Kenwood has yet to score above 170 for their subs. Enough with subwoofers let me get to the head units.

Head units now I will argue until I am blue in the face, the Pioneer head units (about $150 and up) are much better quality than most other head units on the market. I would most likely choose a Pioneer head unit over an Alpine head unit from the great stories I have heard about them. Pioneer offers far more features than almost any Kenwood on the market, and I am not even talking about the highest models...

I may have come across as a dick. Just don't take this as me being a complete dickhead. I enjoy talking about speakers/audio equipment, it is one of my many hobbies I guess you would say.

If you want to actually spend some money on something super nice go with brands like Nakamichi, McIntosh, Eclipse, etc.
Nakamichi -- These are said to be very good head units, although they are ugly as sin, their high end units have TONS of features, and yet they remain an almost "stock" look. Have fun finding one of the decent models of these under $1000, and better yet have fun finding it period.
McIntosh -- This company produces high quality amplifiers as well as some other audio equipment. They have a *few* (don't quote me on that, i can only think of one right now) head units out that are stylish and like Nakamichi, expensive. Good luck finding these at a good price.
Eclipse -- This company is seemly to be going down hill since they have finally been introduced to the *mainstream* retailer of Circuit City. Their products are still quality, although they are not as good as they used to be a year ago. This is still a very respectable brand that you would want to look at if you were wanting to spend a decent amount of money on audio equipment. These head units are much more affordable than the two above listed brands.

These brands are geared mainly towards sound quality that you will not find in many mainstream brand head units. Although some of the differences are slight, some people are just picky and want that slight *edge* on others with the high end mainstream brands I guess you would say.
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Anyways, I have no idea why I typed this, this user is not planning on spending this much on a head unit. I have had quite a bit of gin tonight as well

[gadget73]

Loud does not equate to good sound. Subs also are not really an accurate measure of a mid or a tweeter's performance.

Nakamichi and MacIntosh make car audio stuff? Hm, didn't know that. I've only ever seen Mac stuff as high end home audio, and mostly Nak stuff as high end home tapedecks and such. Somehow I never imagined these big boys of audio in the car realm.

As far as those particular decks are concerned, I have no experience with them at all, but the Kenwood HU in my car doesn't really navigate well. The controls aren't really intuitive and the display sucks. its not smart enough to scroll the song title once then flip back to clock for example. The JVC I have in my truck does. It just has an overall far more intuitive operating layout. The Kenwood is a little funny to operate. In sum, my advice there is to go somewhere that you can see them in action, and spend some time operating them. Buy what seems to feel more comfortable to you.

[saiyaneye]

Good advice, but I see one thing I disagree with

Loudness indeed is important, depending on what the listener is looking for. I am more of a SPL guy. So I look for louder woofers, one downfall from metting high SPL goals is the fact that you have to throw about 2,000+ (being generous) watts to a sub to get above 150db.

Pioneer also offers a wide variety of SQ woofers as well as SPL woofers as well as Kenwood does to. I just feel from my personal experience with owning three Pioneer subwoofers and two Pioneer head units, they make quality stuff. Not to mention the Kenwood amplifier, and head unit I have owned as well too. The navigation on the Kenwood some of the head units I played with is not as smooth as the Pioneers, I have had/used. I have never owned one of their subs, but from reading many reviews on them and listening to one in my buddies car, I would not recommend them for sound quality over Pioneer.

On a side note, McIntosh and Nakamichi make some bad ass home audio equipment if you are willing to pay. I just now found out that Nakamichi makes visual displays too =-O My uncle has a McIntosh amp, omg that fucker is nice. I guess in the long run if you wanted to spend that much on audio equipment, you could build something slightly less quality for over half the price of the McIntosh or Nakamichi products, both car and home audio.
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Lets get off this subject, he wanted info about head units and I started talking about high end home audio equipment and subwoofers Sorry for throwing your thread in a different direction.

[mrltd]

I fit 4" eclipse point sources in my dash under the pad..They have HUGE magnets.

I got a pioneer DEH-4800MP. It's a great unit. Aux input, ip-bus, lotsa nice controls. Was about 150 bucks. still working on gettng speakers.

[gadget73]

Good advice, but I see one thing I disagree with

Loudness indeed is important, depending on what the listener is looking for. I am more of a SPL guy. So I look for louder woofers, one downfall from metting high SPL goals is the fact that you have to throw about 2,000+ (being generous) watts to a sub to get above 150db.

Loudness is all well and fine, but I was just pointing out that its impossible to accurately judge how one speaker sounds based on the SPL levels of a subwoofer of the same brand. Its just not relavent. Apples to oranges and all that.

[Blaze86Vic]

Gadget is correct, if you want loudness that is fine, but you can't say a speaker is better because it makes more noise. And you especially can't judge an entire company based on this sub woofer fad. Kenwood does not put that much effort into SPL contests, since the amount of base that a sub puts out is 20X overkill for a vehicle. Much like Bose, Kenwood is focused on quality and clarity, Clarion is also a company that is quality focused. You gonna say they are crap? I mean I have never even heard of Bose competing in SPL.

[85crownHPP]

just make sure you get some sattelite mount tweeters - Id go ahead and get component sets. It brings the music up high all around you, the alpine tweetes were the greatest thing I did for my stereo