do i need good speakers for a sub?

With what you're describing you have no need at all for a pair of 12's.  One decent 10 would probably be enough to drown out your full range speakers at high volume.

well, in that case, sure.  Just keep the gain down, probably set the low pass pretty low too, they'll sound fine.

An amp to support your front speakers would help things blend better -- also would give you a high pass filter to cut the lows, which is what causes the majority of the distortion in full range speakers.

Keep the stock speakers, they'd probably sound infinitely better than cheap aftermarkets on head unit power. 

X2 @Jeffdachef

to piggyback on Jeff's comment, you might want to keep stock stereo and speakers as most stock speakers work best with OEM stereo. Just add sub amp to OEM HU. Just an idea since you don't plan to get crazy loud.

I would buy your friends stuff and sell them. If you are not trying to get loud, I would get a sundown shallowmount. Use the money to fund a sub and custom box. You keep space with a custom box and can maximize on sub sound. Sundown's shallow mount sound pretty damn good imo (had one in my frontier). If you are in SoCal, I might have a SD10 sub laying around if interested.

I'd get an amp for the stock speakers and keep the 12s.  Stock speakers on actual power sound like a completely different monster.

It depends what rms the 2 12's are if your thinking of 1000watt rms subs then good rule of thumb is 100watts speakers for every 1000watts rms subs. So if they are 500 watt rms then 50 watt speakers should do fine. Upgrading to a good aftermarket headunit that puts out 30-50 rms per channel should bring new life to your factory speakers and make everything  sound pretty uniform.

L1ttlet said:

Upgrading to a good aftermarket headunit that puts out 30-50 rms per channel should bring new life to your factory speakers and make everything  sound pretty uniform.

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:wow:

sooo, which HU's offer that kind of power?

n2audio said:

:wow:

sooo, which HU's offer that kind of power?

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None do. Not realistically. You can buy the boost pack mini amps that can fit in the dash though. 

Really for what you want a simple sub, amp, box should suffice. 

Dont go too cheap on the hi/lo converter. The cheap ones often fail. But you dont need a $200 either