On my 97 F150, I have an aftermarket hu and aftermaket speakers in the doors. I am fine with the loudness but I want to add bass.

1) What if I add two 6x8 low frequency speakers in the back and run from HU with low pass filter? This would be the least expensive. How will this work?

2) F150's big brothers (Expedition and Navigator) have subwoofer amps in the back. Can I put one of those in the back and run just one 8" subwoofer? This would be within my budget, but I have no idea how to wire the subamp.

3) Buy a 4 channel amp and run front speakers from 2 channels. Bridge 2 rear channels together to an 8" subwoofer. Is this the most common way?

Thanks for educating me on car audio.

 

Bass is a watts thing and a big cone thing.

#1 is going to give you a good improvement, depending on the watts available in your deck. A HU with less than 25 watts RMS per sub speaker (about 50 watts peak) is going to sound a little muddy.

#2 depends on the type of amp. If you get a 100-watt amp (50 watts RMS) that is designed to bridge the output to one speaker, that 8" sub will sound very solid. This is an inexpensive way to feel thump in your chest. Most modern HUs have a sub out and that would be wired to the amp input. You need to balance the subs to augment the fronts, not drown them out or distort before the fronts do. I had an input attenuator (volumn-in of sorts) on my amp to get the full range of volumn balanced.

#3 has a lot of complexities. Using the HU for the fronts and bigger power for the sub is simpler.

I've tinkered with a lot of subs and while power is key, the diameter of the sub brings down the frequencies reproduced and I'm here to tell ya - go as big as you can. I had a pair of 8" in my old Toyota P/U and that got my attention. I have just one 12" in my home theater (with the watts to back it up), and that's best described as OMG territory.

 

Thanks for the bass 101.

 

I'm glad that was useful.

 

Yes, your post was very useful Thanks.

My JVC KD-G710 have 4 V preamp out, but no sub out. It's bigger brother version has 2V sub amp out.

Can I still put the 4V preamp out on the sub amp with a low pass filter (just a coil or coil & capacitor) between preamp out and sub amp?

 

I found this [LINK] and thought this would solve the whole thing. Plenty of power, stays with the JVC name, lowpass filter is built in the input, can be bridged, and a very reasonable price.

 

Thanks. Navigator and Expedition may have a speaker level sub amp with built-in low pass filter. If so, adding the sub amp is a simple matter of connecting speaker wires to it (and power of course). I will investigate this a little further. Thanks again.

Question to all,
Does Anyone Know If Factory Sub Amp Takes Speaker Level Input (high) or Line Level Input (low)?