Sound System

I've done very little to the sound system in the car except for upgrade the speakers and the head unit. The car originally came with a Chrysler cassette player, which was not in working condition when I bought the car.

I looked into head units and did a lot of research and decided to chase down a Jensen KDC-9520 CD/cassette deck. I found one on eBay for about $30 used (as-is) and luckily it installed perfectly and worked great. Over time, I found a lot of faults in the unit as the clock, backlight, and several CD controls do not work. It does play CDs but skips and freezes up every once in a while.

I have recently upgraded my Jensen KDC-9520 to a new Pioneer DEH-4600MP head unit. The Pioneer is simply amazing. The internal amplifier is awesome, and there's no comparison with the Jensen. When you get it set up right, it hits so hard that you'll think twice about whether or not you need a sub. It doesn't fit in the factory opening, but the free adapter provided from sounddomain.com makes it fit without hassle.

I defenitely recommend the Pioneer 4600 unit as it is probably the best you can get for under $200. For $160 shipped from sounddomain.com, you get the 4600 and all mounting accessories, which will cost around $20 at your local Wal-Mart. And for only $160, you get mp3/wma capability, and so many tweaks and options that you'll be beside yourself. The equalizer is totally customizable and there are also tons of other settings that will make it sound the best that it can.

It also has an awesome look to it, and I love the blue backlight and green accents. It's lit up very well and can be easily seen in both day and night environments, and the control layout is very clean and accessible. All in all, I love this unit.

The second upgrade to the sound system was an entirely new speaker component system. The stock speakers were pretty good for what they were, but at high volumes they couldn't hold their own. I replaced the front 6.5" stock speakers in the door panels with a set of Audiobahn AS65Qs. They're specified to handle 100/200W RMS/Max. I replaced the rear 6"x9" stock speakers as well with Audiobahn AS69Qs, which handle 200/400W RMS/Max. They sound much better than the stock setup, especially due to the addition of tweeters. The audio clarity is much better and the speakers don't start giving out in the high volume range. I'm sure these speakers could seriously pound if I amped them, but they sound good enough with only 200W coming from the head unit.

Installation was a pain, but that's what I was expecting. Removing the rear deck carpet piece was a job in itself. After that, I swapped the speakers and cut the carpet a little so that the speakers would fit with grills installed, and then reinstalled everything for a stock look. In the front, I tried using the adapters, but the speakers stuck out too far so that the factory grills wouldn't fit. I later fixed that by simply drilling 4 holes and mounting the speakers flush in the door panel. After that, it fit perfectly, and now my system looks totally stock.

My next ideas are to remove the tweeters from the front speakers and mount them on the dashboard. I'm also looking into adding a subwoofer and amp in the trunk when I feel up to it. And I've recently been looking into getting a new pair of front 6.5"s because my right front Audiobahn seems to be rattling a little from all that pounding. The Audiobahn component speakers sound good and do their job, but I'm not impressed when 17W RMS from the head unit blows out a 100W "capable" RMS speaker.

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