Need some help...blew new a speaker

[slowburb]

I bought the DB's from a distributor who sells to the audio shops around here (2 pairs for $50 cash). He's next door to my office. Maybe I should go see him and give him the WTF about his speakers. Yeah, there are no, and will be no drive by bassings EVER performed by Jimmy C. People may hear him coming, but it will be the rumble of my engine and pipes, not the thump of "music" (and I use that term loosely) being played through too much audio.

I used to have friends that were into that stuff. I actually watched this kid hook up all kinds of stuff, old school stuff, pyramid amps and 4 kicker comp 12's, etc, in his Escort GT, then crank it up and proceed to blow the rear glass right out of the hatchback. That was in like '93, so I lol'd before you could lol that day.

 

[evolocomotive]

My son started out with junk, kenwoods that sucked, Then I showed him Polk DB651's and they sound freakin badass!

 

[GT_80]

If you have the factory tweeters hooked up with an aftermarket speaker and aftermarket head unit, that will hurt too- both the headunit and the speakers. When you put speakers in series you add impedence to the system which draws more power, and when you add them in parallel in halfs the impedence which is bad for a head unit that is not rated for it. Most factory speakers are 8 ohm from GM in this year range... EG when you see "150 w 4 ohm" you better hook those to a 4 ohm rated stereo output. If you run 4 ohm speaker and an 8ohm tweeter in parallel (which they probably are), your impedence drops to 2.66 ohms which will hurt the speakers and the headunit causing the internal amp to blow prematurely. I used to build a lot of steroes back in the day...

I agree that those DB speakers are on the low end of quality. I like Pioneers for cheaper ones, I like infinity for better ones, and they go up in cost and quality from there...

Unplug the tweeters, and make sure the power and impedence rating of everything attached matches or all bets are off.

 

[SwampHound]

Oh man. I'm face palming pretty hard right now. Didn't even think about the resistance difference for the speaker and tweeter.

 

[slowburb]

OK. I'm taking a step back and trying to research this. My head unit wants speakers with over 50 watts output value, and 4-8 ohms impedance value. It says not to use anything with 1-3 ohms, all per the manual. My 4x10's are 4 ohms. The DB drives are claimed by DB's website to have 4 ohms "nominal impedance" (I don't know what this means). I don't object in any way to disconnecting the tweeters in the doors. I was researching to try to find out the ohms rating of the tweeters for the heck of it, and wound up at another forum, reading a thread about factory speakers, where I read that there is a factory amp for the rear door speakers in GMT400 SUV's. It is allegedly a silver box, either under the dash or under the driver seat. Can anyone confirm this to be accurate? There is a small silver box (maybe 8"L x 4"W x 1"H) under the driver seat in my truck. It looks to be separate from the little lumbar inflator that is wrapped in foam hanging from the underside of the seat.

 

[df2x4]

Yes, there is an amp for the rear door speakers.

And yes, you should disconnect the factory tweeters if you want to keep everything proper as far as resistance. The only correct way to maintain the factory tweeter location is to buy a component set and replace the tweeter itself with the new one from your set.

Once again though, your head unit pushes about 16W RMS. The 50Wx4 is a peak rating. You do not need 50W RMS speakers unless you're planning on adding amps.

 

[slowburb]

An update for this thread:

The speaker wasn't/isn't blown. There's some major vibration going on with that door panel. No distortion/vibration from the speaker with the door panel removed.

I put the Pioneer 4x10's in the cargo area, the other pair of DB Drive 6.5's in the rear doors, and disconnected the tweeters in the front doors. Everything works, and it sounds good, way better than it did before. Thanks for the advice and commentary...