captclam

I am so depressed!! I just type this post and it had 12 excellent thoughtful questions and was about 200 words long and my computer crashed!!

Needless to say, this will be a crestfallen attempt to reproduce that message

I have a 93 SC400 with the premium (read pioneer) system in it. I have some stuff that is about 5 years old that I want to put in my 400. I have a fancy-schmansy Alpine head unit that I am not going to use because I am terrified of working behind the dash.

Stuff I have:
Alpine tweeters with integrated crossovers.
Alpine 2way 5" speakers
Alpine 100w amp (bridgeable I think)
Rockford Punch 45 amp (bridgeable? 7 years old)
JVC 250watt 4 channel amp
10" MTX gold subwoofer

The stock system is way too muddy for me. The imaging sucks. There is no sound coming from in from of me at all. The sub is worthless, in that if I turn up the bass, mud comes out of the speakers. I have to turn the treble almost to the max 5 o'clock, the mid down to about 10am and the bass to about 9 o'clock just to make the system tolerable.

(1) Can you get good imaging in this car without moving speaker locations or getting custom kick panels?

(2) Does the amp (junk in the trunk) handle all the crossover work and if so, where are they crossed?

(3) Do the drivers and the tweets in the doors have a separate line back to the amp or are they both on the same wires coming from the amp?

I am think I need at least to buy a new set of speakers. Given that I could drop another $100 or so on another set of speakers:

(4) Would you put the Alpine 5"ers in the door or on the back deck? and given that, what would you buy for the other location? I was thinking of those Rockford Fosgate speakers with the tweeters that you can swivel. I was thinking of putting the Alpines in the doors and the RFs on the back deck and pointing the tweets at the rear window. Dumb?

(5) Would you even put 4" drivers in the back or would you go bigger, and if so would I have to do cutting of the deck?

(6) should I even bother swapping out the tweets with the alpines?? Seems like a lot of work.

(7) What in God's name is the right way to get the rear deck grills off? I tried forcing them and it did not work well. I got the grill for the sub 1/2 off (just enough to see the paper plate that is posing as a subwoofer) and I gave up. Actually, I was too much of a wuss to get it the rest of the way off... thank God, I probably would have broken it worse... or worser!!

I would like to try and use some of these amps.

(8) Is the sub the best place to start?

(9) How in the world do I connect an amp to the stock system? The amp cannot handle the amped up input from the other amp, right? And even if it could- wouldn't it be noisy as heck (cursing omitted).

Lastly,
(10) Is there any power tap in the trunk suitable for powering a true 100 watt amp? Or do I need to run it from the battery? If so, how would you route it?

Please guide me oh great ones!!

Kirk Davis
a.k.a Captain Clam

(p.s. anyone taking time to answer in detail can contact me off line for me to answer any computer, network or Internet design, security, troubleshooting or what ever problem they may have. I feel guilty asking this detailed question and providing little in return. I am an engineer with Cisco, Microsoft, CISSP and Checkpoint certifications)

captclam

Please help, some Guru out there...
By the way, those 5.25" speaks weren't Alpine, they are Infinity 2 ways... (thank God)

captclam

Better move fast the auction ends in 30 mins:

http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI...tem=1261258004