School me on radios and speakers

[peobryant]

I want to get better speakers for my truck (I still haver the stock ones) but the people I have talked to said I'll to need to get a new radio, or head unit. I don't want to do that, because I lve the stock look in the interior, and I think a new radio ruins that.

Is there any way to get quality speakers (I don't want sub woofers or any of that stuff) without sacrificing the stock radio? Or are there any radios in other Dodge trucks that would fit in mine that have a CD player? My current radio eats tapes, and I have a bigger CD collection than I do tapes and 8 tracks, so I'd prefer a stock looking CD player.


Thanks

[ellis93]

I'm not 100% sure but I've read were any truck radio till 01 or 02 will work.

[PToombs]

Yup, anything up to an '01 will plug right on. You may have to trim a tab on the radio, I did with mine. I have am/fm/cassette/cd players in everything, '92, '97, and the Breeze. Niiiiiice.

[ahale2772]

those newer style players like to eat CD's, Pete, where did you get the radios that you put in your truck? junkyard?

[PToombs]

Uhhh, yup! What do you mean, "eat", and how newer? I got $120 set of CD's for christmas and I was going to start playing them. I haven't yet because I didn't think the cold weather would help them any. The one in the 97 came out of a similar vintage car or van and the one in the 92 I can't remember what it came outta.

[ahale2772]

My step mom had a 97 that had a factory replacment cd player and my dads got his 02, the both would take cd's and then not spit them back out, we figured out u could stick another cd in pry it up and eject it and it might work....but right now the dark side of the moon has been stuck in there for months

[PToombs]

....but right now the dark side of the moon has been stuck in there for months

And what's the problem.......?



Thanks Alex, I'll be forewarned if it happens to me.

[ahale2772]

haha just make sure you are always listening to something you really ....realllyyyyy like

[firstgenjunkie]

If you like the stock head unit but want better speakers, Crutchfield and others, sell direct replacements. You would also need to get an amplifier to produce enough power to get good sound. Correct me if I'm wrong y'all but stock head units are like 5w RMS/15w peak? You may can reuse the stock wiring, but you will have to cut/solder/shrink wrap to correctly hook up the amplifier. There is less work doing this than making the headlight relay upgrade (http://www.dieseltruckresource.com/d...d.php?t=176263).

I went the other route and purchased an aftermarket similar in style to the stock radio. It came with an mounting place, an adapter harness to directly connect to the factory wires, as well as RCA connections for my external driving the subwoofer. Whatever you do good luck with it!

[cougar]

Kinda depends are your taste in music and how long your a captive audience too. I found the OEM radios and speakers just didn't have the quality I needed for clean clear audio reproduction.

[Sequimite]

I'm still a week away from picking up the '91 D250 I'm buying but while I know practically zilch about diesels I know quite a bit about stereo.

The cheapest easiest way to improve your sound is good speakers. I've hooked $500 speakers up to a cheap boom box and they sound pretty darn good. The main issue is getting efficient speakers. I'll be looking for speakers as soon as I get my truck and will post some suggestions then, but for now the crucial thing is to get a coaxial speaker with a real tweeter, not a whizzer cone. Check the resistance and get 4 ohm speakers which are very common now. It used to be that they were almost all 8 ohm.

[slingshot]

I used to have a CD player out of my wifes 99 jeep grand cherokee in mine. It looked factory.

[Sequimite]

Still don't have the truck but I do have a plan.

I'm going to disconnect the wires going to the 2 speakers in back of the seat and throw the speakers away. I will then hook both pairs of wires up to a dual voice coil woofer in a box behind the seat. If the 12" is too big I'll go with the 10".
http://www.amazon.com/Infinity-Reference-1262w-1200-watt-High-Performance/dp/B0028AYIXK/ref=sr_1_34?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1298508226&sr=1-34

I have the box so the cost so far is under $70. If I was going to buy replacements for the door speakers I'd angle for a 4 ohm coaxial and wouldn't necessarily go with another pair of 6 x 9" but would try to find a quality pair of speakers in that size or 5 1/4" round or something in between that will fit into a hole in a 6 x 9" piece of plywood. Instead I'll be using a pair of Atlantic Technology double cube satellite speakers which I already have. They are very efficient and will cover a frequency range that will complement the 12" woofer. The cubes pair of 3 1/2" full range speakers are very similar to the speakers in the original Bose 901 concert speakers, but MUCH more efficient.

I'll try this set up with the stock radio just to see what it sounds like and report back. Then the stock radio will go in the trash and be replaced by a name brand unit with at least 50 watts a channel like this one for $100:
http://www.amazon.com/Infinity-Reference-1262w-1200-watt-High-Performance/dp/B0028AYIXK/ref=sr_1_34?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1298508226&sr=1-34

If I end up needing a crossover for the woofers or more power for it, I'll add to the system.

[PToombs]

I'm going to disconnect the wires going to the 2 speakers in back of the seat and throw the speakers away.

You know how long it took me to find the speakers and brackets for back there?

[Sequimite]

I picked up my truck yesterday and have had to change my plan already. The truck, a 1991 regular cab D250, came with an empty bass cabinet and I made some assumptions based on that cabinet, but . . . the cabinet doesn't quite fit behind my bench seat. First, though, some basics on speakers:

It was determined back in the 50's that to accurately reproduce bass in a pair of sealed acoustic suspension speakers you needed eight 12" woofers and a LOT of cabinet space. There were other possibilities. I saw a picture once of a house that was actually built around a pair of 15" Altec speakers and their eighteen foot concrete horns. So the first thing to realize is that you are not going to get stereophonic quality bass in your truck. Before I go on I must comment that none of the "subwoofers" you see for sale are actually subwoofer. Any self respecting woofer will get you down to about 30 hertz. A real subwoofer takes care of the bass below 35 hertz, reinforcing the weaker bottom frequencies and extending lower. The Paradigm subwoofer I have in my home has decent volume down to 16 cycles, below human hearing, but you can feel it.

So when upgrading speakers in our trucks the best we can hope for is decent bass down to about 50 hertz. If you'd rather have thumping instead of musical bass it's much easier, but that's not what I'm addressing here.

The biggest problem is space. With older cars one could mount the speakers on the deck above the huge trunk. My truck being a regular cab, has very little space. I thought about building a console that is actually a woofer cabinet but I like my bench seat and don't want to give up that space. I thought about the extra space in the ceiling but wasn't keen on drilling holes in the roof to support it. There's not enough space beneath the seats, so we're left with the space behind the seat. The only thing that really fits is a shallow 10" woofer in a 5.5" deep box that is at least 13.5" tall and 20" wide. So I ordered this: http://www.amazon.com/Clarion-WF2510D-Voice-Shallow-Subwoofer/dp/B0032FOJKM/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1298837245&sr=1-1

There are many cheaper ones available, but it's not worth it to me to go cheaper.

I didn't mean to dis the back speakers, but in a regular cab they are firing into a mostly closed space and can't contribute much. Bass however doesn't need a big opening to fill the cab.