Am seriously thinking about adding an amp to my ICE setup, however in order to price it up a bit better I have a few questions ...

I currently have only front components, do I need a 2 or a 4 channel amp? If the amp has a built in high/low pass filters, do I drive the tweeters/mid seperately, or use 2 channels and the supplied crossovers?

Has anybody mounted the amp under the drivers seat? I'm not keen on having it in the boot. If so, which amps fit?

How hard is it to get the central column in bits to run cables?

Approximate fitting cost?

Cheers all

cb

 

With only two front channels you only need a 2 channel amp. A compact one should fit under the drivers seat. (BTW 04's have some wiring under there for the seat belt warning)

General consensus is use full pass and allow the matched cross overs do the filtering. After all they were designed to work with the speakers Mount the cross overs in the door.

You need to split power & signal.

Run the power down the door cill and the RCA/speaker cables under the carpet at the base of the transmission tunnel. It is a lot easier if you take the seat out

pic for a few ideas

 

mikey 2 questions, sorry for jumping in.

wouldnt the amp get too hot sat behind the seat if the seat is fully back? or does it not touch the amp when fully back?

the standard tweeters, see your not running the uprated versions in the standard tweeter location... any reason behind this? or is it size of the tweeter hindering this?

 

Nope the amp doesn't run hot, it hardly heats up, I made sure of that before I fixed it there. Yes the back of the seat does just touch the top edge of the amp. I now have some velcro on there to protect the seat.

The bottom picture is my old MY00 car which had no door tweeters as stock. A pillar mount is a better place providing you set it up right. If you look at the first pic that is my current 04 car and the tweeters are in the stock door card position. I can hear the difference so I am going to get a couple of A pillar trims and mount them flush at the the bottom end of the A pillar.

 

ah right i see, cheers. going to attempt to fit my sterio setup over the summer as i add to it.

buying a jl d4 12" sub this month off a mate, head units fitted already just need to decide upon what components and 2 amps i need for it all!

 

Have a look at a decent 3 channel amp that way you can power speakers and sub from one!

Believe it or not that one behind my seat does 5 channels

 

was going to look for a mono amp for the sub and a 2 channel one for the fronts but if a single 3 channel amp is easier and can still get the same effect then that may well be the route. probably do a build for the corner of the boot like the examples available then mount the amp to the left of the spare wheel on a mdf backing board as need the boot space!

 

Sorry not in my book..

IF your running a 2 channel it is best to have a High pass cross over to cut all the frequencies below 50-100hz (depeading on what the midbass is rated to go down to).
Although the Comps will in most cases come with crossover units they dont all ways cut the lower frequencies and even if they do its hard works and can damage them long term.

But for the Best sound and control (= Volume) consider running 'Active'.
This means not using the crossovers that came with the Comps and having a 4 channel (6 if you are running 3 way comps) amp powering the speakers. You will then either use the built in crossovers in the amp or an extrenal crossover unit.

An active will give you the ultimate sound and dynamic range. It will also be MUCH more efficient as passive crossover sap a lot of power turning it in to heat.

Non of my systems run passive btw.

 

That's because you've taken ICE to a whole different level to us mere mortals!