Hey all,

Any sound upgrade recommendations for my truck? I was looking at the Kicker VSS Powerstage powered subwoofer and amp kit running about $1200 online, and also upgrading all the door and center console speakers while I'm at it with the Kicker KS series speakers. This was the one VSS that kept coming up. Any other suggestions are welcome and appreciated. Thanks all.

 

I had a bad experience with kicker speakers being bad out of the box when I redid the sound in my old truck, so if you go that route make sure you test before buttoning everything back up. I ended up with Infinities and I think they sound pretty good, although they don't really shine unless you crank it up. 6 years later they still sound good. As my current F150 ages I will probably look into replacing the door speakers. In the old days, when a head unit was easy to replace, that made the biggest difference. Ford has some weird compression going on when you crank it up, which, as an pro audio guy drives me bonkers. It's not nearly as bad in the current gen as it was with my older Fords.

Kenwood made good head units but I've not found any of their speakers to be up to par.

I'm a big fan of JL Audio stuff. It just seems to work, even after lots of abuse but it isn't cheap. I've always thought their subs were "crisper" compared to Kicker. If only Electro Voice made car audio...

 

Try going to an auto audio shop/ Crutchfield online and look for customer reviews.

 

Thanks. Definitely going with JL subwoofers. A friend of mine pointed me towards Infinity speakers. It'll run me about $700 for the front door speakers, tweeters, sub and amp. More than I expected since it doesn't include the rear door and center speaker. I'll post a follow up when all said and done. Thanks again.

 

How are you connecting the stock radio to the amp?

 

Usually, there's a small plug that you can use the back two speakers for the input for the amp. The, to do it properly, You find a 12v switched power supply for the amp to turn off when the key is off.