I have a PT Cruiser with the factory speakers. While it's possible that I'll have the cash to upgrade these someday, for now the expense of having the factory sub and empeg put in will be it for my purchases...except, of course, an amplifier.

Any great ideas for an appropriate amp, the smaller and cheaper the better, that will take good care of my empeg?

Crunchy,
I have the Rockford Fosgate 400a4 amp installed under the drivers seat of my Cruiser. You can check out the photos in the Installation forum.

Cruz Ths

Long before I bought either my Cruiser or empeg, I was anxiously awaiting the results of your installation, Cruz. Thanks for the page and pictures, as it helped me get convinced the purchase of the empeg was a good idea (the PT purchase was never in question for me. Pretty little things, aren't they?).

My concern is that unlike you, I'm using the manufacturer speakers instead of upgrading as you did. This being the case, wouldn't the amp you are using be significant overkill in both power and price for the little things?

You also mention you mounted the amp under the driver's seat. Does your PT happen to have power adjustment for the driver's side? I'd be interested to know if my powered seat would cause clearance problems for the amp you are using.

I have another question for you in particular. You are using the beautiful Mopar subwoofer made for the PT. I, too, have installed the sub, but am unsure how I'll tie it all in with the empeg install since it's little 50w power supply is likely to not deal well with the amp's connections I suspect would be available to it. How did you tie your sub into your system?

Thanks for the comments. Any further input would be most appreciated.

wouldn't the amp you are using be significant overkill in both power and price for the little things?

I think you may be misunderstanding the relationship between amplifier power and speaker capacity.

Sometimes you will see speakers rated at x number of watts, like a "500 watt subwoofer" for example. That doesn't mean that you need to have a 500 watt amplifier; it means that theoretically you could put up to 500 watts of power into the speaker without damaging it. The key words here are "up to". Just because you have a 500 watt amplifier doesn't mean that you have to drive 500 watts out of it.

You could connect a 10,000 watt amplifier to your stock speakers and they would be just fine, as long as you held the gain on the amplifier down to a listenable level. In the above (absurd) example, your amplifier gain would be set to pretty near zero. But within reason, more power means better sound. It's better to have a 500 watt amplifier running at 20% of its maximum capacity than a 100 watt amplifier running at 100%. You'll have less distortion, cleaner attacks, quicker transients, less heat, more reliability.

In fact, you are just as likely (maybe even more likley) to damage speakers by using an underpowered amplifier than by having one too powerful. The underpowered amplifier trying to drive large or multiple speakers will be stressed to the point of clipping the signal into square waves, which is highly detrimental to speaker longevity.

Amplifiers seem to be one of those commodities in which you get what you pay for. Expensive amplifiers generally sound better than cheap amplifiers of the same power rating. You can buy amplifiers from about $99 on up to about 20 times that price. The amplifier that is going into my new competition car just about splits the difference there, and is rated at just 300 watts.

tanstaafl.



"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

...at 400w and best of all he is willing to give it to me for $60...

Just remember what I said before... in amplifiers, you tend to get what you pay for. My suspicion, possibly quite unfounded, is that if he is willing to sell a little-used 400 watt amplifier for $60, it may not have been a very good amplifier in the first place.

What sort of amplifier you want depends on what sort of sound you want. There are two general schools here: Sound Quality and Sound Pressure Level. SQ people want the best possible reproduction of the sound; SPL people want the loudest possible sound. Both are valid outlooks, and I take no sides in the debate, other than to mention that SPL people are generally mouth-breathing knuckle-dragging lunatics with more money than good sense, while SQ people tend to be sensitive, intelligent, and would never cast aspersions on other people's taste in stereo equipment. But, I digress...

If your primary interest is heavy, thumping bass to impress the people who ride in your car, an inexpensive 400 watt amplifier (plus a couple of big subwoofers) will do the trick. If, on the other hand, you are building a stereo system that makes you wish your commute were longer and that you can listen to without pause on a 10 hour road trip, then trade off high power for high quality instead. A high quality 200 watt amplifier (one that sold for $350-$600 originally) will make you happier than a 400 watt amplifier that sold originally for $199.

Disclaimer: The above is just my NSHO, is not based on any scientific research but is just the result of my own experience and prejudices. YMMV. :-)

tanstaafl.





"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

What sort of amplifier you want depends on what sort of sound you want. There are two general schools here: Sound Quality and Sound Pressure Level. SQ people want the best possible reproduction of the sound; SPL people want the loudest possible sound. Both are valid outlooks, and I take no sides in the debate, other than to mention that SPL people are generally mouth-breathing knuckle-dragging lunatics with more money than good sense, while SQ people tend to be sensitive, intelligent, and would never cast aspersions on other people's taste in stereo equipment. But, I digress...


And then there are also those SQ people who tend to get peeved at the SPL people... So they have that little EQ setting that puts a little more emphasis on certain bands.... And THEN goes to the SPL side. Oh, how I love pulling up to a redlight with one of those turkeys booming away. And then start to up the volume till you know that they are hearing your music clearly more than they are hearing their own booming... And then just lean over with your hand by your ear, as if saying... "Can't hear you... "

Not that I would know anything about that.... No... That was only my hypothetical case... Really...

(it's even more fun when they have all of the manufacturers stickers all over their car... A shopping list for thieves really... )

Wait... no, I haven't EVER done that...

GOOD SQ setups, in my experience, tend to be ABLE to go louder, simply because you are engineering in enough power and responsiveness to handle any dynamic in the music. SPL setups tend to have huge inexpensive amps... Which loose half of their power in heat before making it to the coil. The SQ people will buy the large expensive amps simply so that they aren't running full out all the time, for better quality. YMMV, of course... Mine typically does.

Just remember what I said before... in amplifiers, you tend to get what you pay for.

In this case, I'm thrilled with the result. Nice, clean sound and loud enough to fill the car on the freeway. Brand name of the amp turns out to be Majestic. Anything anybody has heard of before?

What sort of amplifier you want depends on what sort of sound you want.

I'm certainly not looking for sound levels that'll stop the human heart or anything. Just enough to make the loud music sound good. Thus far, I'm fairly impressed. Then again, I'm new to car stereos, so it's probably not much of a chore to impress me.