The advice I am giving is building a budget build that will be way better than the shaker 500 setup now.
If your budget is higher than $1000 then I would be doing the same setup just using different speakers and amplifiers. Adding an additional DSP and other things.
I did all the install myself on our mustang. The only thing I had a local shop do was design and install the enclosure in the trunk
To have them do the complete install of what I did would have cost over $5000.
First off I can not explain how bad the factory Shaker 500 system is compared to a basic 2 way tweeter, 6 1/2 woofer setup. and a small 10 inch sub in the trunk.
The Shaker 500 is really , really, really that bad.
Crutchfield has good pricing , Sonic electronics has good pricing ,
I also bought some things off
Ebay and
Amazon when I did our mustang.
The Kenwood should be fine it has the time alignment , crossover adjustments to get it to sound good. Page 73 in the Kenwood owners manual
goes over the crossover setup
1. I would on the tweeters if they do not come with some type of crossover I would put some kind of bass blocker on them to keep from messing them up by accident in the tuning process.
2 No I did not use any rear speakers, no need to add the extra cost.
I did not take the rear speakers out , just unpluged the harness at the speaker, zip tied the harness to keep it from moving around.
There is really no reason to keep the rear speakers if you are going to use a subwoofer setup in the trunk.
also the 2 way setup in the front with a tweeter pod on the dash and a 6 1/2 in the lower door is plenty,
A two way setup has way more clarity and volume to what is in there now.
3 On the radio install I completely bypassed the radio system. I did not use any wiring harness. I ran a new ground wire to ground the head unit. I ran a constant hot wire with a fuse tap from the fuse block to the head unit and ran a accessory power wire also with a fuse tap from the fuse block to the head unit. It did not take long at all.
I new I was not going to be using any factory speaker wires so there was no need to use a harness to tap into the factory
4 Use a basic subwoofer setup in the trunk.
I know on the caraudio website Skar audio is looked down on here.
But I installed two Skar IX-10 10 inch subwoofer setups for a couple friends of mine.
One was in a Honda accord, We used their prebuild box and did two 10 inch subs
The other is a extend cab truck. We did a single 10 inch sub in that one
For a $49 ten inch subwoofer it not bad at all. Way better than the door subs the mustang has on the shaker in it now.
Skar also has a prebuilt box the SK1X10v for $69 to fit their 10 inch subs. I can not build the box and carpet it for really to much less than that and it will fit in the trunk and still have some usable trunk space.
In the Honda accord we did the dual 10 setup. the box is the SK2X10V it cost $119 for the dual 10 box.
once again I really could not build one for any less. The boxes are pretty decent quality for what they are at the cost they sell them.
I am sure that using someone on here to design one would be better than using the prebuilt but I was more than impressed with the output of the prebuild ones they have.
4 If you have any basic car audio experience the mustang was not hard to work with. The only things that I ran into was tracking down and working with the best way to get the speaker wires tracked down to not have to take the doors off and drill through the Molex plug.
Now that I have done it once it would only take me about 20 minuets vs the 2 hours it took the first time in that step of the install.
I am sure others will chime in with different speaker or amplifier options.
If I was doing it all over again with a budget build that I know I could do and still sound good I would be looking at something like this
head unit kenwood dmx 7706s that you have now
massive ct 2 tweeters $80
silver flute 6 1/2 mids $85
skar IX-10 $50
Sakr box $70
sub amp Rockville DB 11 $80 the DB series seem to be good to go.
4 channel amp Rockville RDX-F30 $100
I might would go up a little in cost if I wanted to look at different amplifiers
amplifier wiring kit are low cost ones off
amazon or
ebay cost a little less but the RCA they use and the remote turn on wire is very low grade wire. I would spend the extra money and buy the materials and put one together myself. 4 gauge sky high car audio CCA wire is $1.25 per foot. CCA wire is fine for no more power than the system will be
all on
Ebay
wire 20 feet 4 gauge sky high cca wire $25
Anl fuse block at the battery $10
remote turn on wire 16 gauge $6
ANL distribution fuse block at the amplifiers $12
4 gauge copper wire lugs will need 4-6 of them $10
Rca cables KnuKonceptz Bassik need 3 of them $30 get the 5 meter ones don't want them to be to short
subwoofer wire from amp to subwoofer box 8 gauge $10 $1 a food get 10 feet, will probably have some left over
speaker wire Sky high 16 gauge CCA will work $13 get the 100 foot pack you will have some left over
various tools, heat shrink , zip ties, wire loom, solder ect $50 you will need at least need a voltage meter, soldering iron, heat torch
noico sound deadening 18 sqft on
amazon $33
Lumiteco bearing roller to apply deadening material $9
so far we are around $ 673 not counting the head unit and the dash kit.
but if $650-$700 is out of budget
I could probably cut around $20 if I used a cheap wiring 4 gauge amp kit .
But be prepared to solder the end connections on the cheap amp kits. The ring terminals that come with them are crap. and do not loose one or mess one of the terminals up, They only put in one set of terminals needed for the wire kit. Also the ground wire in the kit is way to short.
I could also cut around 30-50 cost on the tweeter and 6 1/2 woofer cost.
A set of kenwood KFC p710 component sets are around $129 on
ebay.
A set focal ISS 165 components on sale for $125 on
ebay. The tweeters that come with the focals are a decent mounting pod option like the massive ct2
Even using a component set you do not have to run the crossover that comes with them, still go active using the kenwood head unit and use the crossover settings with the head unit and the amplifiers.
Keep in mind a lot of the lower cost tweeter options will not have multiple mounting options that come in the box
as a general rule the massive ct2 tweeters and the silver flute seems to be the best 6 1/2 for the money out there.
Could also save $20-$30 using different amplifiers. But the specs of the amps and cost of the Rockville seems to be hard to beat for the money.
Looking around and cutting some cost could probable get the equipment for around $520 if you look hard enough. But I do not think it is worth the $100 in savings to go super budget. Not for the amount of time you will have doing the install yourself.
Super budget will still be way better than what is in there now. So if you want to go super budget don't feel like you would be missing out
O the truck my friend did for his son
He wanted to go ultra cheap budget.
used cheap rca cables only had to buy one
used the cheap amp kit off
amazon even used the cheap rca cable that came with the amp kit for the other rca
Used a set of component speakers ran using the included crossovers
used a single amplifier. We used one 4 channel amp
ran the tweeters and the 6 1/2 on channels 1 and 2
ran the 10 inch skar sub on channels 3 and 4 bridged
did some noico sound deadening in the doors.
used some foam gasket to seal the speakers to the doors.
It was crazy how much better it sounds over the factory.
And crazy how much better it sounded over the shaker 500 system in my sons 2012 mustang
