Upgrading Base Speakers

[ZEEP]

Hello,

I just want a simple, plug-and-play upgrade to make the sound a little louder and better in my Jeep JL Sport S with the 7" Uconnect 4 and the base 8-speaker system (no amp, no sub).

As far as I know, all my stock speakers are 8 -ohms, and each corner has a 3.5" and a 4" speaker wired in parallel.
From Google, I know that two 8-ohm speakers in parallel make a 4-ohm load.
This means the 7" Uconnect 4 can handle a 4-ohm load per channel, right?

These are the speakers I chose to upgrade the old ones :

• 4× KICKER KSC350 ── 3.5", 4- ohm, 50 W RMS.
• 4× KICKER KSC40 ──── 4", 4 -ohm, 75 W RMS.

Total 500 W RMS.

I’m considering the KICKER KEY200.4 amplifier because of its size and price, but it can only handle 4 -ohm per channel and has 200 W RMS total output.
Wiring two 4-ohm speakers in parallel would drop the load to 2-ohms.
Can this amp handle these speakers?

I don't know much about car audio.. I can only screw and unscrew
Share your experience to improve sound quality.

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[skullbus]

There are other amps on the market around the same price that will go to 2 ohms a channel. I just finished my sound bump upgrade kind of the same way you’re thinking. Full set of kicker KS speakers. 3.5 for the dash, 6.5 for the knee panels, and 6x9s in the roll bar. Alpine KTA-450 to power them (I went with this because it can do 2 ohms a channel, is small, and I tapped into the pre wire for the stock Alpine amp inside instead of running wires to the fuse box because it only needs 20A fuse and stock Alpine is a 25). They get pretty loud. It’s odd that a kicker amp can’t go down to 2 ohms a channel…their amps are usually beefy enough, but I guess all that auto EQ they built in has to take space and money from other things to keep the price comparable.

it won’t be simple plug and play though. You’ll need resistors or an interface on the radio output to keep the audio going through an amp, find a place to put it, connect all the wiring and all that jazz.

edit: it could be “almost” plug and play with some pre-wiring. I made this for my install.

 

[ZEEP]

There are other amps on the market around the same price that will go to 2 ohms a channel. I just finished my sound bump upgrade kind of the same way you’re thinking. Full set of kicker KS speakers. 3.5 for the dash, 6.5 for the knee panels, and 6x9s in the roll bar. Alpine KTA-450 to power them (I went with this because it can do 2 ohms a channel, is small, and I tapped into the pre wire for the stock Alpine amp inside instead of running wires to the fuse box because it only needs 20A fuse and stock Alpine is a 25). They get pretty loud. It’s odd that a kicker amp can’t go down to 2 ohms a channel…their amps are usually beefy enough, but I guess all that auto EQ they built in has to take space and money from other things to keep the price comparable.

it won’t be simple plug and play though. You’ll need resistors or an interface on the radio output to keep the audio going through an amp, find a place to put it, connect all the wiring and all that jazz.

edit: it could be “almost” plug and play with some pre-wiring. I made this for my install.

Thanks for the answer.

I have a few questions:

1. As I see, Alpine KTA-450 has a 200W output too, while your speakers require a total of 600W. Does that mean the speakers will only use part of their power?
2. Which resistors are you talking about?
3. What is that KICKER box connected to your Alpine amp?

 

[Tr4ckD4ys]

There are other amps on the market around the same price that will go to 2 ohms a channel. I just finished my sound bump upgrade kind of the same way you’re thinking. Full set of kicker KS speakers. 3.5 for the dash, 6.5 for the knee panels, and 6x9s in the roll bar. Alpine KTA-450 to power them (I went with this because it can do 2 ohms a channel, is small, and I tapped into the pre wire for the stock Alpine amp inside instead of running wires to the fuse box because it only needs 20A fuse and stock Alpine is a 25). They get pretty loud. It’s odd that a kicker amp can’t go down to 2 ohms a channel…their amps are usually beefy enough, but I guess all that auto EQ they built in has to take space and money from other things to keep the price comparable.

it won’t be simple plug and play though. You’ll need resistors or an interface on the radio output to keep the audio going through an amp, find a place to put it, connect all the wiring and all that jazz.

edit: it could be “almost” plug and play with some pre-wiring. I made this for my install.

https://www.jlwranglerforums.com/fo...razy-3800-watt-audio-upgrade-write-up.154480/

 

[Jebiruph]

I found that the efficiency of my Infinity speakers produces sufficient quality and volume of sound and I haven't needed to add an amplifier to my base 5" system, but they will handle the power if I decide to add one later.
https://www.jlwranglerforums.com/forum/threads/base-system-speaker-upgrade.75015/post-1562924

 

[skullbus]

Thanks for the answer.

I have a few questions:

1. As I see, Alpine KTA-450 has a 200W output too, while your speakers require a total of 600W. Does that mean the speakers will only use part of their power?
2. Which resistors are you talking about?
3. What is that KICKER box connected to your Alpine amp?

600W is max theoretical RMS for the whole set of speakers. Only pair that's "underpowered" is the 6x9s because they can take up to 150W RMS, but they're well in RMS range for those speakers at the power they're getting.

Jeep radios have protection mode. If the radio doesn't see enough resistance (Which is 4ohms a channel in non-amplified setup) it will shut the audio off. As I was typing that, an idea popped up in my head whether this can be avoided by using JSCAN to trick the radio into thinking it's factory amplified and it doesn't do the speaker check similar to when halogen lights get replaced with LEDs...or they thought of all that with the stock Alpine amp).
Kicker box is the inline resistor pack that I went with to prevent the radio from going into protection mode. I prefer to run speaker level input into amps if they support it because it cuts down on need for RCA wires, and I'm convinced that it reduces additional noise being introduced into the sound from the gain being set up pretty high for RCA level input.
At the end of the day you will need some kind of interface for the stock radio on the Jeep to run a speaker amp. Whether it's home rigging resistors (cheapest) to something like this Kicker KISLOAD4 (~$50) to PAC APP4-CH41 (~$400).

I found that the efficiency of my Infinity speakers produces sufficient quality and volume of sound and I haven't needed to add an amplifier to my base 5" system, but they will handle the power if I decide to add one later.
https://www.jlwranglerforums.com/forum/threads/base-system-speaker-upgrade.75015/post-1562924

Back in the day Infinity had some of the smoothest sounding speakers even on the stock head units. Hopefully they're still producing them that way.

 

[Jebiruph]

Jeep radios have protection mode. If the radio doesn't see enough resistance (Which is 4ohms a channel in non-amplified setup) it will shut the audio off.

The factory speakers are a 4 ohm in parallel with an 8 ohm which is a resistance of 2.7 ohm and I'm running a 3 ohm tweeter in parallel with the factory knee speaker, so that's around 2 ohm.

 

[skullbus]

The factory speakers are a 4 ohm in parallel with an 8 ohm which is a resistance of 2.7 ohm and I'm running a 3 ohm tweeter in parallel with the factory knee speaker, so that's around 2 ohm.

I stand corrected...didn't pay enough attention to the 4 inch speakers. The small ones say 8 ohms, so I assumed the channel is parallel down to 4 ohms. The factory system parallels an 8 ohm and a 4.5 ohm (Just tested the ones I took out) down to 2.88 ohms per channel. I could swear I saw someone talking about their radio shut off after replacing dash and knee to regular 4 ohm speakers (2 ohm load).

 

[ZEEP]

600W is max theoretical RMS for the whole set of speakers. Only pair that's "underpowered" is the 6x9s because they can take up to 150W RMS, but they're well in RMS range for those speakers at the power they're getting.

Jeep radios have protection mode. If the radio doesn't see enough resistance (Which is 4ohms a channel in non-amplified setup) it will shut the audio off. As I was typing that, an idea popped up in my head whether this can be avoided by using JSCAN to trick the radio into thinking it's factory amplified and it doesn't do the speaker check similar to when halogen lights get replaced with LEDs...or they thought of all that with the stock Alpine amp).
Kicker box is the inline resistor pack that I went with to prevent the radio from going into protection mode. I prefer to run speaker level input into amps if they support it because it cuts down on need for RCA wires, and I'm convinced that it reduces additional noise being introduced into the sound from the gain being set up pretty high for RCA level input.
At the end of the day you will need some kind of interface for the stock radio on the Jeep to run a speaker amp. Whether it's home rigging resistors (cheapest) to something like this Kicker KISLOAD4 (~$50) to PAC APP4-CH41 (~$400).

If I install a aftermarket amplifier that supports 2 ohms per channel, do I still need the KISLOAD4 to prevent the radio from going into protection mode?

The factory speakers are a 4 ohm in parallel with an 8 ohm which is a resistance of 2.7 ohm and I'm running a 3 ohm tweeter in parallel with the factory knee speaker, so that's around 2 ohm.

1. What are the actual specifications of these 8 factory speakers?
2. Is each pair of 3.5″ and 4″ speakers wired in parallel?

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