'05 Tacoma sound system upgrades?

I have a 2005 Tacoma. Right now it is all stock. I'm looking first to improve my sound system. I'm not very knowledgeable on this sort of stuff. Any tips/advice on a good in dash and speakers?

Anything helps!

 

It really DOES depend on your Budget. You can upgrade your stock sound system for as little as a few hundred dollars. Or,,,,,,you could go crazy and spend (literally) thosands of $$$$.

If you just want a Head Unit and Speakers.........?
I personally prefer Pioneer Head Units, but in truth, they all do the same thing.
Journey to Best Buy (or your local equivalent) and play with their Display Units and pick a Brand you like the look of and that has the features you want. Do you want BlueTooth for hands free phone? Do you want to stream Pandora from your phone, or hook up your IPOD? Ask the salesman about those features........

As for speakers? Listen to what they have and pick some that sound good to you. A basic set up would be 6x9's in the front doors and 5 or 6 inchers in the rear doors (if you have rear doors).
Cost?....Around $150 for a pretty decent H/U......$200 to $400 for speakers in all 4 doors. Add another $50-75 for misc stuff like Dash Mounting kit, speaker adapter mounts, wiring kit.

Professional installation can almost Double the cost,,,,,so either do it yourself or find a friend who can do it for you. That about covers it for a Basic Upgrade from the stock stereo. Even this Basic Upgrage will Drastically improve the Sounds in your Truck.

 

Thank you! I have someone to install it all. And he says pioneer as well. Just wanted to get some other opinions. I was more curious about what good speakers are. There are so many to choose from. The only store to go look is a couple of hours away so its a little hard to go joy ride to look at them. I really don't want to order online though. Thanks for the tips!

 

Something like these for the front are Basic and will sound MUCH better than your stock speakers.
http://www.crutchfield.com/p_109JBLG796/JBL-GT7-96.html?tp=91

These would work for the rear, I think.
http://www.crutchfield.com/p_130TA1675R/Pioneer-TS-A1675R.html?tp=95

You could spend MORE of course,,,,,but unless you want to add an Amp it probably wouldnt be worth it to spend much more $$$.

Honestly,,,,the only way to judge Speakers (which are the most important part of a system) is to Listen to them. You might listen to a friends stereo and, If you like what you hear, buy those.

 

Personally I would get a decent head unit to start, it'll make a world of difference on the speakers. I just picked up a pioneer headunit and I love it.
I was looking for bluetooth primarily so I could connect my ipad without having to pull it out of my backseat.
http://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-AVH-X...F8&qid=1416624258&sr=8-1&keywords=avh+2600+bt
I had the previous model in my old car, so Ive been pretty happy with pioneer so far. And like said above, any of the popular door speakers would suffice. I'm sure youre not looking for a showcar system.

hope that helps alittle bit

 

Pioneer sucks to tell you the truth. yes they work for a few years before problems, but the sound is NOT PERFECTLY clean! your highs/mids/lows will be ?OK? and bearable, but not good. Fujitsu-Ten is by far best in the world, but very expensive and needs to be imported from Japan if you want a new one. Mine I bought in 2006 when still sold in the US was about $3100 (installed myself) and still performs perfectly! after all this time! For easy to get cheaper units, Clarion is your best bet. MAKE SURE what ever you choose has separate RCA outs for your mids, highs and lows and has at least 12 watts output on each, can play DVD,DVDRW,MP4 videos, etc. Also make sure you can control the power to the low RCA from the head unit and has separate front and rear A/V so you can use GPS in the front and kids can watch sponge bob or what ever in the back (LOL) ALSO MAKE SURE it has ability to hook modules to it directly for XM/SIRIUS, Ipod, HDTV tuner and any other option you want to add (if not already built in) so you can control everything from the head unit itself. For speakers.

Clarion NX702 is a pretty damn good unit!

if you want GOOD hard hitting woofers with no 'flutter' due to small air space, you pretty much are limited to Kicker Solobaric (the square ones), you can SQUEEZE 2 12in behind the back seat if you really try, but MUCH BETTER off and better sounding if you use 10in due to air space. The Kicker Solobarics require the least air space and are rather shallow, made for this type of use.

you WILL have to make a custom box if you want full air space and you WILL have to cut all those stupid brackets off the back wall.

if you want the best of the best amps, there is NO competition in this department LUNAR, they are hand made and untouchable. a Lunar rated at 100watts will put out in REAL power about 900 watts at 2 ohm bridge and run all day no problems. i have only blown 1 LUNAR it was an L100 i ran on 2 rockford fosgate 12in at 1/4ohm, blew in a couple weeks, Kenny actually gave me a free one and dissected that one to find weaknesses. i have only used them for serious setups for 15 years. you can also send them back to Kenny to have them fixed or modded in anyway you want.

for mids and highs there are many good brands. Polk Audio, Infinite, Harman Kardon, even Kicker and Alpine has a few good ones now.

not sure how big you want to go, and what your budget is, but i have done and tried it all in my Tacoma. i can help you out on this if you want.

currently i run:

2 Kicker 10in 2ohm Dual Voice Coil Solobaric woofers
Lunar L2200 on the woofers
Luner L425 on the mids/highs
3 Farad capacitor
Fujitsu-Ten Head Unit with A/V and Nav
Polk Audio highs and mids
2ga power wire
dual 30amp rockford fosgate fuses w/ breaker
Active Crossover on highs, mids, lows
XM/Sirius module

i had to do ALOT of trimming after i removed the crap bins under the backseat to shoe horn the amps, capacitor and crossover under the backseat! (the underseat bins were in my truck from the time it took to get from the dealership to my house, if anyone wants them, cover ship or pickup they are yours been sitting since i bought the truck)

INSTALL is SUPER EASY in Tacomas, save some money and do yourself bro! plenty of folks here can you help with it.

if you needs a couple mid-level amps i have a polk audio 4 channel you can run your highs/mids on, and a phoenix gold sub-D you can use for woofers i'll sell for dirt cheap they just taking up space. i also have a hand made, (board is signed inside, modified by Kenny himself for one of his competition LUNAR trucks) competition series LUNAR L100 i could spare.

best advice i can give you is map out what you really want and even if budget does not afford your layout, just acquire the pieces over time, because in the end if you buy cheaper stuff that you really do not want, you are wasting your money because in the end you will end up buying what you really wanted.

just like lifts

PS -- ground the 'park wire' so you have full control while driving

 

one last thing about Pioneer, the LCD is pretty dim in sunlight, brightness is measured in 'nits' or 'mcd' under about 1000 nits or 500 mcd, no-a-seeing in bright sunlight

 

Thanks yall. That helps a lot!