Speakers cut out, replace speakers, or whole system?

[beavis195]

I have the 94 with premium sound (not JBL), and when I turn the bass up, when ever it hits, the treble cuts out. If I were to replace just the speakers, would this make any difference? Or would I have to replace the whole system?

 

[JTang]

The premium sound and JBL packages are butt. Check this out:

http://www.3drant.com/about/jay/Mountaineer/FordSpeaker.jpg

That thing in the middle is their "tweeter". So, you're caught between a rock and a hard place. For one thing, if you get new speakers, they will play the treble, and it will sound better. However, in my experience, the new one's don't really hold up to the type of bass abuse that you're already putting on the stock speakers. The stock speakers, while not as high end, are a little more "heavy-duty" and therefore can be abused a little more with their thick cones and fat nasty surrounds. The whizzer cone "tweeter" is close to the woofer part so it's heavily affected being paper. Unlike an aftermarket, where the tweeter is in its own casing and sort of shielded from the woofer waves.

You don't need a whole new system if you don't want to, just some better speakers. 6 years is a lot for old speakers made out of paper. They're not hard to change at all.

My 2 cents!

Jon

 

[Skippman]

Indeed, after a while you would have to think that the papaer the cones are made out of would start to degrade. Couple of my home Advent speakers did that, and thier not in near the enviroment extremes car audio speakers go through.

While I never recommend you use sub-standard equiptment in replacements (seeing as how you don't want to do it twice) I would tell you that you can get the same sound quality out of a $20 set of Pioneers from your local Wal-Mart. They are, for all intents and purposes the same speaker.

I would however, recommend that you eventually go to at least a 3 way speaker, if sound quality is an issue for you at all. I'm positive you could achieve some desirable effects with the factory amp and the correct speakers. Some other members would be better suited to answering those questions than I.

 

[Alec]

Of course I have a 95+ Explorer, but the speakers are still the same. I replaced my 4 speakers with RockfordFosgate 5x7's and immediately heard the difference, and they're not paper! Beware, speakers take a few days to break in, they won't sound perfect until they do.

 

[beavis195]

How much did you pay for the rockford fosgates? Oh I just bought a Pioneer 400 watt subwoofer with a RMS of 175 watts, but I'm going to put it in my suburban. If later I was going to put this in my explorer, what kind of amp should I get? and if I use the subwoofer, would I have to bypass the stock amp, meaning I would have to wire the amp to all four dour speakers? Thanks

 

[Alec]

My system came stock with just the four corner speakers, no woofer. I had the RF's put in, I think they were about $45 per pair? My memory's fuzzy. I have a box with 2 isobaric 10" JL's I don't know their wattage, but I have a RF 150a2 amp on them and they sound great. The amp gets the signal from a patch we did into the rear speaker line in the passenger kick panel. Thus, my amp is just running the subs and the four corner speakers are running normally. I think it sounds good. It's not excellent, but I'd rather get more horsepower than a few clearer notes!

 

[JTang]

Beavis,

You'd probably just want to put in an amp that's similar to the amp you'll use in your Suburban for the Rockford, unless the 'burban already has some stock sub that you're trying to replace. Any nice, small amp will do. All you have to worry about is getting one with roughly 150-175 watts RMS. Also, if you're using the stock system, then either: 1) get an amp with speaker level inputs or 2) get a regular amp with RCA inputs, and then buy a line level converter to patch into it. That'd be about it besides the amp install kit.