Stereo advice,

Hey guys, I'm very new to stereos, will someone please learn me on the ins and outs of everything I need to buy to set up a decent system? Amp, head unit, amp install kit, and a sub, anything else needed? Thanks guys! 2002 Tacoma with stock stereo atm

 

Anyone??

 

http://www.the12volt.com/caraudio/caraudio.asp

 

thanks alot man.

 

Biggest question is what do you want from the system?

Car stereo is a somewhat slippery slope project, which really should get done right the first time. Which means that everything needs to get planned out first then purchased right from the start. There is a lot to consider..if someone wasn't into this stuff as a hobby during their highschool/college years (thus knows by experience the pain of what happens when certain corners are cut due to extreme budget limits, and having to redo certain aspects of the system or even damaging the system components), I wouldn't even recommend the project as DIY. Its one of the only projects where 'a chain is only as good as its weakest link' and 'you get what you pay for' really applies.

 

mBrogz pretty much said it right. You have to be pretty handy with tools not scared to solder wires, pull sticky door panels off, and take things apart again after you have them put back together because you didn't do something right . Car stereo is fairly hard to do, and it takes a lot more of your spare time than you think.

If you do want to take it on, it is very rewarding. You learn a lot about your wheels and you end up with a pretty tricked out system for a fraction of what it costs to have the pros do it. That being said, I've heard some DIY stereos that sound like shit because the person didn't know what to buy or what he was doing.

Crutchfield is good if you need a bit of help going in the right direction. Amazon or Sonicelectroics are good places to get stuff for rock-bottom prices, but your very much on your own if you go this way. Same with Pawn shops, you can get stuff really cheap there, but your very much on your own if something doesn't work right. I have a list of everything you might need (wiring harness, kits, etc) in the thread that is liked in my signature. But it is for a 2014, not an 02. Things will be different on your rig.

If you want to proceed, the first thing is you have to know how much money you can throw at it. $400 or $500 min I would say. A grand is better...that's about what I spent. Minimum, you need a pair of decent speakers for the front doors (about a hundered min), a good deck (200 or 300 min), and Dynamat for the front doors (about 50 bucks). Then you need speaker brackets, a deck install kit, and a few wiring harnesses (figure at least 70 more bucks).

You can use the stock speaker wiring if you run your speakers on deck power. If you want to do an amp, things get much more complicated. Things also get dangerous, as you might burn you vehicle down if you don't do the wiring right with an amp. I guess you could burn it down if you didn't wire the deck up right too .

It's up to you man. There's a few brand whores on this site, but most of the time people give pretty good advice in this forum.

 

Here is my pain story: Around the time the Kicker ZR series was out, I had bought a Kicker SI200 from a friend with my hard earned minimum wage work money I earned and saved. This was a 500 watt amp at 4 ohms. I had 2 8 ohm 12" rockford fosgate punch subs in parallel, so it was a 4 ohm load.

Way underpowered for two subs... I ended up killing it by melting the power stage because I knew nothing of how unregulated power supplies worked, and how important it is for the vehicle's electrical system to be healthy and for the amp power distribution to be rock solid. I had only 8 gauge wire running to it, and some cheesy ground (which means that my 8 gauge actually was effectively 10 gauge or even lesser.) I sent this amp off to Stillwater for a cost estimate to get repaired and they wanted basically what I paid for the amp to fix it. I didn't know anything about the way company's basically price repairs against the customer cost of buying new product. I didn't have the funds to get it repaired, or even get it sent back so it just stayed there. My install was really shitty too, which is probably why it failed.

This is the kind of stuff I'm talking about. For a single sub to sound good and powerful in a car or truck, you need to be willing to power it with between 500 to 600 watts. Anything less than that, and its just going to be enough to move it only to hear rather than feeling a beat. Ground connections are everything as well.

For the Tacoma..there is lots and lots of detail work involved, mostly because of space constraints and because the amps need to be mounted vertically and they can't be mounted against the box. The owner needs to be a good carpenter, and you need to be good at electrical, have tools to pry apart the cheap plastic panels, tools and a place to work.

For budget expectations, here is a ROM.

Head unit (w/ 4 Volt preamp and all options expect touchscreen) - $250 to $300
Front Component Speakers - $200 to $600 (buy these from the smaller manufacturers)
Rear Coaxial Speakers - $150 (these are unnecessary in the Tacoma since they play right into the front seats for the Driver)
1x Good 4 Channel Amp - $250 to $650
1x Good Mono Sub Amp - $300 to $600
or
1x Good 5 Channel Amp - $450 to $650 (at lesser overall wattage)
1x Good, Thin (truck) subwoofer - $250 to $600
1x 100 foot spool of 12 to 16 gauge OFC speaker cable - $40 to $150
3x Good RCA cables - $60 to $100
Sound Deadening Material - $150 to $250 (maybe more?)
1x NVX Power Cable kit, 0 Gauge - $150
Box materials, carpeting, spray glue, wood glue, fasteners - $100
1x 20 pack Toyota/Lexus interior panel clips - $8
Optional: 1x Epicenter module and 1x short RCA - $220 (for assuring the bass fully always plays on songs where bass is reduced, example Michael Jackson's Thriller or early 90's stuff or even Christmas music)
Labor- ???!!!?!?!?
This isn't even getting into sound processors or merging 2 channels into 1 for a center stage...

Stay away from entry level equipment from the big guys...stick with at least middle level equipment.

Also, just a last note on Crutchfield...they really are great at what they do, but their literature really over-simplifies everything thats involved with getting fantastic sound into a vehicle cabin. They are fine with selling you the $800 component speakers at retail and 'the why you need it' part, but don't really make it known how important the sound deadening portion of the project is (its equally as important as all the equipment) or even the power quality part.

 

the Epicenter makes low bass that isn't in the recording. it detects harmonics and reproduces them an octave lower

this was helpful back the in 90's when we had cassette players that cutoff at ~50Hz. it's meaningless in the digital age of bit-perfect audio

 

Another good resource

http://www.bcae1.com