Upgrade head unit and speakers or just the speakers?

with this rig every year i been upgrading some aspect of my truck to help me prolong the enjoyment of modding. this year im gonna do the sound system. i been reading that the kicker tweeters is a great upgrade for cheap. what i wanted to know was, what other brand would be good to uograde to? for reference i favor bright highs over bass so brands like focal and diamond, and old school alpine (for their sq decks sound processing) were my go-to. are these brands still around and what is the modern brand names to look for? thanks in advance.

 

I did the Tweeter upgrade, and spliced the rear speakers (from the stock HU) to run the underseat 8" powered Sub. Sounds great.

Best bang for the buck.

 

I have a set of those DS18 tweeters coming today. I'm doing the kicker CS upgrade with sound mat and those tweeters this weekend while I ride out my covid quarantine lol. I'll report back. Hoping the sound will improve a bit. I've always had custom stereos and didnt want to go down that road in this truck. The older I get the less important it is.

 

I have a ‘22 limited and want full apple carplay. Is there a head unit that accommodates the 360 degree camera view?

 

the sound mat i used from Amazon stated to use gloves because the foil can cut you. i did not use gloves, BIG mistake.FYI

 

I have the stock head unit, I'm old school I guess and still have and play CDs. There are no other head units that do this, but more importantly, correctly fit in the dash. The stock radio doesnt send hardly any power to the rears, they are very quiet to non-existent. I have an access cab, and don't know if its much different, but suspect from reading its not much better for the 4 door version. If you don't need CDs, I would probably buy the joying unit if doing this all over, and dealing with no cds. It has component outs, and 50 watts if you don't want a separate amp. That alone would solve the no rear power issue, and most peoples SQ issues. I also did the kicker key mod. I have Focal components in the front, and Focal coaxial in the rears. It greatly improved the sound, but I am still not happy with the amp. The DSP is garbage, absolute garbage, it was shocking how much worse it sounded with it on. You cant run the amp in 2ch mode either for more power if you want to forget about the rears. It also runs out of juice and starts clipping if i turn it up past 75-80% and cutting the sound. I have 91db speakers, it should be fine all the way up to max. It has 2 knobs to adjust the input levels, they do *NOT* adjust the volume level, but the input voltage to keep a clean signal. Turn it up much, and the clipping LED will light up, and it will sound horrible. The fronts are all the way down, otherwise it would clip. I have the rears turned up about 25% before they start clipping, and this really really helped the no rear signal from the head unit. You could achieve all of this on an external amp also, turn up the input on the rears no problem, so you could forget about swapping the head unit. I was fiddling with the settings last night with the truck off. The clipping LED would light up very very quickly if I turned up anything at all. I then read in the manual that the LED would light up if it also ran out of power. Sure enough, I turned the truck on, and at 14 volts, it didn't do it near as much, so it was running out of power at 12v. I have it wired up as in the popular guide to the head unit as posted and well known in this forum. I don't think its getting near enough juice this way, and I am now going to try to wire it straight to the battery. Honestly, I should have gone with an external amp with plenty of power to spare if I had to do it over. I shouldn't have to turn it up past 50% on a proper system and 91db speakers to be blown away. I dynamatted the front and rear doors, and now they have a very nice "thunk" when closed, instead of the typical aluminum can sound they had. To be happy, I know in the future, I will probably replace the very weak key amp with a 5 channel real amp and a sub, unless wiring it to the battery will give me the power I want. It does sound so much better than stock now, I will admit it is very tolerable. You could turn the stock up all the way, and it was still quiet. Now I generally have it up 80% and its probably plenty loud for most people, as judging by the many favorable comments about the key amp. This is my experience, like and subscribe and hit that button if you enjoyed the content.

 

I just did the kickers and Subaru tweeters. Worth every penny! Wow the oem is crap hahaha. Thanks for the recommendation brotha!

 

Change the head unit if you're going to do anything and expect improvement.
I swapped out all the speakers and did a four-channel amp on the door speakers as well as two subwoofers and an lc7i.
Still really disappointed with the sound, the head unit is really underpowered especially towards the back speakers. No matter what you do without changing out the head unit you're not going to have good volume in the back which greatly diminishes the overall sound.
I've been waiting quite some time to get the head unit I want and I'm going to be pulling the trigger next month.

 

I did the kicker upgrade today. Rear speakers were a waste of time I should have just put a powered sub in instead and saved the $80 I spent on the rears lol. I have an access cab so other than not hearing music from every direction the rears aren't that big of a deal. Definitely not going to win any sound competitions but for the money, the upgraded 6x9s and the tweeters was well worth it. I probably could have swapped everything out in a couple hours if it wasn't for the soundmat. I did the tweeters first so I could see how much of a difference just those made. I used the DS-18s from Amazon. Not sure if they're any better than the subaru speakers but they were well worth the $69. They sound great. I shut my truck off at 4:25 and started it back up with the new tweeters installed at 4:48. So less than a half hour of my time and that included disconnecting and reconnecting the battery. I'd recommend this upgrade for anyone who likes to tinker and isn't an audiophile looking for a full component/amp set up. I went into it not expecting much, but was happy with the new found clarity of the Kickers and the tweeters for such short money. I consider myself to be advanced with the tools being as I was a Harley mechanic for 25 years, but even the average joes with some basic hand tools should be able pull this job off without too much of a struggle. If you're on the fence, go for it.

And as the above posted stated, wear gloves if you're going to do the sound mat, my knuckles look like I was in a bar fight....

 

As others have said, Kicker Key behind the dash, stock head unit, make a custom harness using metra adapters. I installed mine with ZERO cuts to existing harness. I can revert back to stock so no worries about voiding electrical warranty should something come up.

For speakers, I installed the Kicker 44KSS6704 in the doors (front and back) added the tweeters in the dash. For the rear I used Kicker 44KSC6704, and an 8" powered sub behind the back drivers side seat.

 

Thanks, keep us informed.

 

See post #50. Got an email today an ebay seller has them on sale today for $62 and change

 

You're not pulling the A-pillar trim to get to the tweeters?

 

I didn’t… I know your supposed to, but I didn’t learn that until after I installed them. They were fairly easy to do without removing the pillars, but I’m sure even easier with them off… lol!

 

Good to know! From watching a couple videos it looked like pulling those covers took more time than anything else.

 

I pulled the pillar covers. Takes 5 minutes per side. Doesn’t add much time really. Whatever works for you!

 

The new head units are YES YES that much better !
I did the same and new head unit …. Game changer
Garbage in garbage out
The head unit is by far the most important thing

 

What aftermarket HU have any of you upgraded to? I’m not sure which way to go. Just purchased a HU from a 2021 Tacoma with CarPlay 3.0 really like the HU but if I can sale it I may go aftermarket.

 

If anyone is interested in a Toyota HU from a 2021 Tacoma with CarPlay 3.0 non navigation with AutoHarness House adapter PM me please.