Boycott CarAudioCentre (Need some help as well LOL)

[Shady Pioneer]

So quick rundown, bought some speakers from CAC (HAHA), and tweeter was broken, so for the past two days been sending emails explaining I just want to swap them for another set of speakers and pay the difference, also tried ringing their Returns line which constantly keeps telling me it's engaged. No replies to my emails. So basically not very happy.

So gonna go with the place that everyone says they get their stuff from, now I want honest opinions, I've never had a proper setup in my car before, so don't know what good or not, but I'm also on a budget of about £200. So I was thinking:

Amp

http://www.caraudiodirect.co.uk/jbl-gto1004e-p-6240.html

Components

http://www.caraudiodirect.co.uk/jbl-gto6507c-p-5135.html

Sub

http://www.caraudiodirect.co.uk/gto1264-anniversary-p-6227.html

What do you think?

[Chris 'N' Jen]

You get a lot for your money with JBL. good place to start.

I presume from that you want to bridge channels 1 + 2 for the sub and use 3 and 4 for the comps. Make sure you set 1 + 2 to the low pass filter and 3 + 4 to either flat/normal or high pass whichever it has on the amp.

It would be a bit underpowered for the sub imo as the sub is rated 300 watt RMS. Good for the comps though.

 

[Shady Pioneer]

You are correct sir, so it's a good place for me to begin with my audio then? It's just I can't afford to spend a whole lot, in my ideal world I buy all Infinity or all top end Alpine or something but we can all dream right lol!

How bad is it that the sub will be underpowered? It won't cook it will it? LOL!

[Chris 'N' Jen]

i think for a budget system you cant go wrong with JBL. We've all gotta start somewhere. i started with a 150 watt pioneer sub and some 5" 35watt kenwood coax. that was baaad.

there are 2 things you need to know about subs and amps. if an amp is struggling to drive a sub ie. the amp is flat out then it will send whats known as a clipped signal to the sub which will burn your voice coil/coils pretty quickly. and anything after about 85% of an amps gain "generally" is goin to be clipped.

however, if you keep this in mind and set the gains on the amp not too high you should get away with it. in an ideal world you would have somewhere in the reigon of 350 to 400wats RMS to power that sub efficiently.

When setting your gains, if you dont have a scope, set you head unit volume to about 85%, slowly turn your gains up untill the speaker goes distort (rememer turn it up very slowly). as soon as you hear this distortion back it off again untill its crisp clear. always start at minimum gain and build up from there.

hope all of that makes sense. 

[Bootneck]

My advise would be to look on this site first before you buy anything,you'll find you get much higher quality kit for a lot less money,sure it's second hand but the bloke tests everything carefully and has an excellent reputation. www.audioethos.co.uk . My whole install cost £155 and is much better than a lot of my friends installs that cost £700+. All I have in my car is a Blaupunkt Sevilla MP53 headunit(£50 ebay),a Vibe Mononbox 3 amp (£40),Infinity Reference fronts(£40) and a Rockford Fosgate 10 inch Bass Tube(£25),rear doors just run factory comps.

[russ-vdub]

My advise would be to look on this site first before you buy anything,you'll find you get much higher quality kit for a lot less money,sure it's second hand but the bloke tests everything carefully and has an excellent reputation. www.audioethos.co.uk . My whole install cost £155 and is much better than a lot of my friends installs that cost £700+. All I have in my car is a Blaupunkt Sevilla MP53 headunit(£50 ebay),a Vibe Mononbox 3 amp (£40),Infinity Reference fronts(£40) and a Rockford Fosgate 10 inch Bass Tube(£25),rear doors just run factory comps.

very fair point.