MACH 460 with aftermarket head unit, aftermarket amp and stock speakers?

robster94gt

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Hey all,
I've seen a lot of topics on the MACH 460, but haven't seen anything about retaining the stock speakers with aftermarket amps.

Here's my situation- I recently installed a Kenwood Excelon head unit using the Metra harness to maintain the stock amps and speakers.
The other day, I started the car, no sound from the stereo. I swapped the stock deck back in and there was still no sound - If I turned the volume up to 100%, I could hear very quiet sound coming out. I think the front amp might be dead, but not sure. I took it out and opened, but didn't see anything obviously wrong. I don't want to order a used unit of ebay and have the same problem or the same thing happen again later.

So I'm hoping to add aftermarket amps, and somehow connect them to the existing speaker wires in the car, reusing the stock speakers, as they are setup.

I was thinking about it, and think that I would need a 4 channel amp to power the 4 full range speakers, and a sub amp using the sub outputs on the headunit to power the larger 'subwoofers' in MACH setup. I was also looking at a Kenwood Excelon 5 channel amp, and wondering if I would be able to use that - 4 channels for the 4 speakers, and one sub channel to power the 4 subs.

Is any of the above possible? would I be able to reuse some or all of the stock wiring to do it?

Thanks for your help,
Rob
 

ttocs

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you have not seen anything about that and you will not see anything about it. The 5 x 7s IIRC are an 8 ohm woofer and that means that any 4 ohm car audio gear you install is going to have significantly less power than it is rated at.

Now the tweets are 4 ohm and you could wire an amp up to them but they are not really made to hold much power.

In the end replacing just the amps will not give an improvement in sound IMO and unfortunately removing the 460 woofers/enclosures will mean a little less bass with aftermarket full range speakers in their place. But if you play them off the deck and then add a small sub you can get much better sound than the mach system did depending on what gear you use
 
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robster94gt

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Thanks for the info - The excelon amp I'm looking at is rated at 400 watts @4ohms for the sub channel - Would that be sufficient to make up for the power loss from the 8 ohm woofers?

To access the tweeter wires, I think that is pretty straight forward isn't it? Are the wires for the woofers also easy to identify and access?

I've got the convertible, so I was thinking of maybe putting the amp behind the seat where the current sub amps are. If I did this, how much wire would I need to run to tap into the 4 tweeters, and tap into the woofers?

Sorry for all the questions, but I want to get sound back in the car quickly and as 'easily' as possible at the moment, with the option of upgrading further down the road - maybe in the fall when I put the car away for the winter.

Thanks again for the quick reply!
 

ttocs

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if the world was linear than 8 ohm woofers off a 4 ohm amp might get you half the power but it is hard to tell, probably less.
 
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robster94gt

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Ok, that makes sense, thanks.

Do you know where I could access the wires for the woofers? Like could I tap into the harness that connects to the stock amps in the back of the car? And for the tweeters, do their wires run to the back harnesses at all?
 

ttocs

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the tweeter "amp" is under the radio. I put quotes around it as its more of a cross over that just splits the deck power out to the tweeters, then to the sub amps in the back.

Just curious why you want to keep the stock speakers? By this time they are certainly not in their prime if the car was well taken care of and could very well be dry rotted to hell if its been sitting out in the sun/heat a lot. I will say again I don't think your going to get any better sound out of them with different amps/more power. You already have an aftermarket deck and I really think new speakers would be worth more bang for your buck. If you want a little more just add a small powered sub, or a large one and the sound will be 100x better.
 
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robster94gt

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I was happy with stock setup and new deck, but then something died, maybe the front 'amp', so I've currently got no sound.

So I figured I would get an amp that would good for future upgrades as well, but wanted to keep the stock speakers for now, in order get the car on the road quicker. I was thinking if I could wire the existing speaker setup to the new 5 channel amp without running a lot of new wiring or remove panels and installing speakers.


So basically, if I could just get the amp, splice into the existing speakers, I'd be able to take care of that pretty easily for now.
 

ttocs

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bypassing the amps on the 94/95s is actually really easy to do and I would also say installing new speakers/bypassed the amps would be an easier install myself. But if you really want to keep the stock speakers then I can give you the wire colors that are listed in the factory manual for the woofer amp outputs for you to find/tap the wires.

I am also assuming you know you will need to run new power/ground wires to the amp and you will also be better off using the rca outputs from the kenwood deck requiring rca's to be ran from the deck to the amp as well. You can get an amp that uses speaker level inputs but The sound is not as good with those and they can pick up engine noise easier.
 
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robster94gt

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Thanks for you help.

Yes, I do know about the power and grounds - I learned about that when installing a powered sub in our Bronco haha.

Ok, yeah, I would need to run RCAs from deck to the rear - hadn't thought about that part yet!

I was originally looking at the kicker key 200.4, because it was so small it would fit where the factory front amp is located. Then I wasn't sure about getting sound to the woofers, so I looked at the 5 channel options.

If the factory subwoofers are wired in parallel, would that reduce the their ohm rating?
In order to run the 4 off of the one channel on the amp, how would that need to be rewired - The Kenwood amp says it has a minimum impedance of 2 ohms.
 

Tturaider

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I just ripped it all out. It really doesn’t take long to take all of the panels off. Just refresh it all and you will be happy in the long run.
 
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robster94gt

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I just ripped it all out. It really doesn’t take long to take all of the panels off. Just refresh it all and you will be happy in the long run.
Did you have a coupe or convertible - wondering what people with convertibles do with the upper space for speakers - can you put component speakers in rear?
 
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robster94gt

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ok, that's interesting - that is probably the way I'd go when I replace the speakers - that with a small sub box - I wonder if any are compact enough to fit behind seat in the convert.

You offered to look up the correct wiring colors - I'd appreciate that. I'd like to see how that works out, and maybe upgrade the speakers in the future.
 

ttocs

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I have some pics of the harness uploading to imgur if they ever load. The front amps input should be brown/orang(+) and red/black(-). The rear woofer amps input are light green/black(+) and light blue/red(-). Now don't be surprised if when you get in there that the stripe indicators have worn off or that the colors are no where to be found as I was often amazed that the colors given didn't seem to match up.
 
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robster94gt

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ok, thanks - would like to see the pics.

I would be tapping into the harness that were on the output of the front amp I guess.
 
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dwcopple

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1. Remove your door panel.
2. Remove your Kenwood deck.
3. Cut the speaker leads from the deck harness so you can add wire to them. Purple, green, white, grey.
4. Buy speaker wire and solder or crimp connect it to deck outputs and run the wire to doors and rear side panels of your vert.
5. Install 2 or 3 way 6x8s in doors with new speaker lead wires.
6. Install new 2 way 6.5s in rear pods of the vert with speaker lead wires.
7. Button everything back up.
8. Fine tune with deck settings.
9. Done.
 

ttocs

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1. Remove your door panel.
2. Remove your Kenwood deck.
3. Cut the speaker leads from the deck harness so you can add wire to them. Purple, green, white, grey.
4. Buy speaker wire and solder or crimp connect it to deck outputs and run the wire to doors and rear side panels of your vert.
5. Install 2 or 3 way 6x8s in doors with new speaker lead wires.
6. Install new 2 way 6.5s in rear pods of the vert with speaker lead wires.
7. Button everything back up.
8. Fine tune with deck settings.
9. Done.
there is no need to run wires into the doors or to the back. There is a much easier way with the bypass harness behind the radio that goes directly to the tweeter locations. IF you wire your speaker outputs to it, then just use the tweeter speaker wires are you signal you have just bypassed the amps.

Besides that he wants to keep the stock speakers and just install new amps. It is not my first recommendation but it is what he wants.
 
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robster94gt

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I think I understand, how I'd connect amp output channels to the 4 tweeters - I'm not sure what I would have to tap the sub output on the amp into, in order to get the 4 speakers to act as subs.
 

Tturaider

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I have a vert. I put 5.25 in the front doors and 6.5 in the rear running off the aftermarket deck. Would they sound better with amp, sure. Perhaps I’ll upgrade in future with a small trunk sub.

Like above mentioned, I just used the tweeter wiring to wire the speakers in and then wired the harness right off this wiring to the front Mach amp.
 
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robster94gt

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Can you explain what you mean about wiring to the front of mach amp?
 

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