old School "Analog" system!

[brianjrealtor]

I have a 1993 Camry..

Head unit- Nakamichi TD 700 cassette player

Amp- Alpine 3554 (4 channel, bridgeable)

Speakers installed so far- Alpine S series speakers, 6" in doors and 6x9's in rear. sound great!

I have not installed the amp yet and want to know where to start in picking a good 2x12 box in the trunk to pop down the back seat for maximum sound.

I was thinking to run the front 2 amp channels to all the interior Alpine's and bridge the back channels to run to the 2x12 box. ( my thinking is probably biased considerning I had one of the original 3-way hatchback speaker box's by Pyle in the early 90's. I got more compliments on that box sound driven by an Alpine 3527 @ 2 channel 80W before the box got stolen years ago. very balanced and warm sounding, better than most people who had component systems)

Questions-

1) good set of used 2x12 woofers in box for a decent price on craigslist/ebay to run off this amp? I don't play rap, just the old school rocknroll..

2) I assume I need good crossovers or something to run all the Alpine's without bass frequency, only use them for mid's and high's?

3) the rear 6x9's are in the factory spot, so would I need to buy 6x9 enclosures to maximize their sound? the back seat would be down as they are powered on otherwise...

just thinking aloud here...it's been a looong time since I was into adding into the car stereo system. the kid in me is back, especially after hearing the Nak playing cassettes compared to the "compressed" unrealistic sound of digital music..

Just MHO preference in analog music for true sound quality...no offense as it's all about personal taste...

any input would be great..I'm probably crazy in what I'm describing in my thinking here of how I want to put this together.

thanks-

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[mossberg385t 10+ year member]

You should probably jsut stick them in a sealed box, but for the power i would recommend memphis M class subs, they're really nice for the price they have a tight suspension and quick return which is great for rock, they're designed as musical subs, i have a pair of 10s and i love them. they run about $150 ea and are 300 rms ea, however i ran mine for a while off of my 1st edition old school orion XTR 475 and was quite content with them on 75 rms ea.

SSA Icons are pretty good as well as sundown Z12 if you can find any, i think loudwhat? has a couple not sure though

 

[brianjrealtor]

you mean, stick the 6x9's in a box too or is that ok to leave them in the factory camry rear spot open-ended with mid's/highs frequency with the back seat down? i was thinking of getting a 2x12 box already with the subs in it for the trunk to run while the back seat is down.

 

[audioholic 5,000+ posts]

I have a 1993 Camry..
Head unit- Nakamichi TD 700 cassette player

Amp- Alpine 3554 (4 channel, bridgeable)

Speakers installed so far- Alpine S series speakers, 6" in doors and 6x9's in rear. sound great!

I have not installed the amp yet and want to know where to start in picking a good 2x12 box in the trunk to pop down the back seat for maximum sound.

I was thinking to run the front 2 amp channels to all the interior Alpine's and bridge the back channels to run to the 2x12 box. ( my thinking is probably biased considerning I had one of the original 3-way hatchback speaker box's by Pyle in the early 90's. I got more compliments on that box sound driven by an Alpine 3527 @ 2 channel 80W before the box got stolen years ago. very balanced and warm sounding, better than most people who had component systems)

Questions-

1) good set of used 2x12 woofers in box for a decent price on craigslist/ebay to run off this amp? I don't play rap, just the old school rocknroll..

2) I assume I need good crossovers or something to run all the Alpine's without bass frequency, only use them for mid's and high's?

3) the rear 6x9's are in the factory spot, so would I need to buy 6x9 enclosures to maximize their sound? the back seat would be down as they are powered on otherwise...

just thinking aloud here...it's been a looong time since I was into adding into the car stereo system. the kid in me is back, especially after hearing the Nak playing cassettes compared to the "compressed" unrealistic sound of digital music..

Just MHO preference in analog music for true sound quality...no offense as it's all about personal taste...

any input would be great..I'm probably crazy in what I'm describing in my thinking here of how I want to put this together.

thanks-

you mean, stick the 6x9's in a box too or is that ok to leave them in the factory camry rear spot open-ended with mid's/highs frequency with the back seat down? i was thinking of getting a 2x12 box already with the subs in it for the trunk to run while the back seat is down.

Old school rock? I honestly doubt you need 2 12's. Id look into a single sub setup. Single 10, single 12, or even a single 15. It will be cheaper, take up less room... and if you get the right products and install it well, it will have all the output you'll ever want.
First and foremost, give us a budget before we can start giving any serious advice.

Second, you dont want to hear this, but ditch the tape deck. Compact disk and newer technology has a much wider frequency range than do those old tapes. It would be a shame to have a sweet new sub setup, but choke off its potential by providing an inferior signal to it. And, nobody has made tapes for years now right? How long can you expect your tape collection to last?

Third, placing those 6x9's in small sealed enclosures will kill their bass output. They are designed to run infinite baffle (no box, just a baffle wall to seperate front and rear sound waves) so when you put them in small sealed boxes, cone excursion is drastically reduced. Since the lowest octaves take the most air movement to reproduce at a given SPL level, lowering cone excursion will only serve to diminish bass output.

Remove the rear speakers from your system entirely. I wont get into the whole is rear fill necessary debate here, all that needs to be mentioned is that with your rear seat folded down, front and rear sound wave separation no longer exists, and erratic freq response and output would be the result. Dont want to put them in small boxes, and dont want to run them with the seat down, might as well remove them so you can leave the seat folded up and still get your bass through those 6x9 holes.

 

[brianjrealtor]

Old school rock? I honestly doubt you need 2 12's. Id look into a single sub setup. Single 10, single 12, or even a single 15. It will be cheaper, take up less room... and if you get the right products and install it well, it will have all the output you'll ever want.
First and foremost, give us a budget before we can start giving any serious advice.

Second, you dont want to hear this, but ditch the tape deck. Compact disk and newer technology has a much wider frequency range than do those old tapes. It would be a shame to have a sweet new sub setup, but choke off its potential by providing an inferior signal to it. And, nobody has made tapes for years now right? How long can you expect your tape collection to last?

Third, placing those 6x9's in small sealed enclosures will kill their bass output. They are designed to run infinite baffle (no box, just a baffle wall to seperate front and rear sound waves) so when you put them in small sealed boxes, cone excursion is drastically reduced. Since the lowest octaves take the most air movement to reproduce at a given SPL level, lowering cone excursion will only serve to diminish bass output.

Remove the rear speakers from your system entirely. I wont get into the whole is rear fill necessary debate here, all that needs to be mentioned is that with your rear seat folded down, front and rear sound wave separation no longer exists, and erratic freq response and output would be the result. Dont want to put them in small boxes, and dont want to run them with the seat down, might as well remove them so you can leave the seat folded up and still get your bass through those 6x9 holes.

cool!

Budget- find some good used or vintage 12's for about $100 - $200.

the reason for thinking of using the 2x12's was due to my past experience in the early 90's when I had a Pyle Driver hatchback box 3-way with 2x12's, piezo's and 3" mids. It sounded incredible and the low end was perfect for my ears playing the same old school rock. the 2x12's worked great for my taste in bass....

any thoughts on speakers? what reasonable priced brand of crossover is good for the fronts to use for only mid's/highs to cancel out the bass frequency? is their an easier way to remove the bass frequency from those 6" speakers without spending the bucks and needed space for a crossover?

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It's always a good debate!!...we will have to agree-to-disagree on analog vs. digital sound. I've done both and the "processed" digital source that CD's produce is no match to the true "feel" and richness analog music produces, especially from the Nakamichi cassette head unit I have. Digital music will always sound metallic or "brash" never to reproduce the true sound of musical instruments because the sound is in "bits". there will always be "gaps" in the sound of the music to guys like me that still listen to vinyl records. My ears always begin to fatigue quickly after listening to CD's cranked up. So, the closest thing to vinyl records is cassette recordings of vinyl albums...

FYI- everyone laughs at first when they see a cassette player in my car and the cassettes tapes box on the floorboard. But even with the basic system I have, everyone that listens to my car setup so far is blown away at how good the cassette music sounds compared to their great car systems with much more spent on their CD players, amps and woofer setups. They all say the same thing- it sounds so much more natural and richer. All I have currently setup so far is the Nakamichi TD700 cassette player, crappy factory toyota amp (made by fujitsu 10) running 4 Alpine's S-series speakers (6" fronts 2-way, 6x9 rears 2-way). the trade off of having a little tape "hiss" in the music is worth hearing the richness of true analog sound cranked up (well, not cranked too much right now with the crapy amp!)...

I can only imagine what people will say after I install the alpine 3554 to run those same Alpine's with a woofer or two added to the system.

It's always a good debate though! it's almost the same argument for guitar players like myself arguing tone from Tube amps over solid-state amps. there are preferences for both.