Here is the deal: I took out my Original Ford stereo and amp to replace with an used DEH-P6400 Pioneer stereo (1990 Ford Mustang). Before the switch, everything was great, I just picked up the stereo for free so I decided why not put it in, it was newer. After the switch, the rear speakers sounded horrible, they got very little power and couldn't output much sound. I just got new Pioneer TS-A6870R 6x8 speakers for my rear side panels and installed them hoping this would fix the problem. Now, I am sure that these new speakers are not outputing to maximum capacity as well. My 15 year old front speakers are much louder than my new Pioneer's! Something is wrong, but I don't know what. Also as you can imagine, the bass from the back is horrible as well because the speakers don't get very loud and everything sounds distorted. I have played around with my headunit settings and that didn't fix the major problem. What is going on here? I don't know a lot about car audio so any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Chris
Make sure that the speakers aren't wired out of phase. Flip the wires around on one (just one) of the rear speakers and see if sound improves, especially bass performance. If that doesn't help or makes things worse, then flip the other speaker to match it. See if overall bass performance (front and rear) improves. If it doesn't, then flip both speakers back to normal.
Factory speakers are louder than most aftermarket speakers for a given power. This is due to cheap materials used to produce them, including the non treated paper cones (paper cones can be good, factory cones aren't though), short voice coils, foam surrounds, generally large surface area since a large surround isn't required. They also don't have crossovers to dissipate any power. It's just the way it goes, honestly.
check to see if their is a crimped wire anywhere...if there is none, i'd say bring it to a shop and have them check it out...if the polarity is fine on the rears, then its either the speaker itself, or the headunit and then just send it back for the warranty. The pioneers should eat 15 year old speakers for lunch.
Hi Ryan, I rewired the back speakers and it sounds great now. I don't know what was wrong with the original wiring, but it made the speakers very distorted. Anyway, it works great now. Thanks for the help, Chris