Hey guys/gals,
I ordered my car with the standard Shaker 500, and heard it is a decently powered system with cheap speakers. Is it possible and/or easy to just replace the stock speakers with better aftermarket speakers without much work? I'd like to maintain a stock appearance but with improved sound. Ease of installation would be important too, because I am pretty ignorant when it comes to audio. Any advice or suggestions on speakers, etc would be great! Thanks!

 

Start with the door and rear deck speakers. Any 5x7 / 6x8 will fit. Next I would go witha good head unti. Then some subs and an amop for the subs. Next a 4 x amp for the front speakers. If you get a little more adventerous then replace the door subs with a good solid 8" sub, but the size does limit the available subs unless your ready for some mods on the sub housing in the door panel.

 

Try Infinity, Alpine, Rockford Fosgate, etc... Unless you want to spend a little more then look at some JL, MB Quart or others of that caliber.

 

i think the shaker 500 is pretty rockin, if you think it doesn't have enough bass you aren't listening to the right music! :headbang:

 

Make sure you get the best though. In this segment, you definitly get what you pay for. Be aware that the door speakers play only bass frequencies as well. You will need to change out the head unit to be able to use midrange/tweeter units in place of the door speakers.

 

Are you saying that midrange/tweeter frequencies are only coming from the back shelf speakers??? That seems...odd.

 

I believe the door speakers are subwoofers, so yes.

 

I'm pretty sure that the lower door speakers are the subs, and the upper ones are for mids/highs.

 

My car was a base model..... with NO options. I wanted a blank canvas to build on. I am building my car for autocross competition and daily driver so I did want better sound than the base radio/CD player. In particular I wanted the capability of playing mp3 files. I purchased a Shaker 500 head unit on eBay from a guy that was installing a totally new sound system. I purchased a pair of Kenwood KFC-C6879ie 2 way speakers for the package tray and a pair of Kenwood KFC-C6889ie 3 ways for the front door panels. Since I only got the head unit, my car doen't have the lower door mounted amps and woofers that came with the Shaker 500.

This package sounds GREAT to my ears (I am not an audiophile). It has all the bass I care for and the midtones and highs are pure and crisp.

I think you would be pleased with a similar speaker upgrade as well. Incidently I ordered my speakers from Crutchfield and they included the cable adapters free and a great set of illustrated and well written instructions that were MUCH better than Ford's Manual.

If you plan on replacing your rear speaakers give me a nudge and I will sent you a few tips to make it much easier to install them, things are Very tight back there.

 

On the Shaker 500/1000 the 8" diameter speaker that everyone can see low in the door is a sub woofer. Yes, it only plays low frequencies. The "normal" front door speaker sits about 12" or so above the sub INSIDE the door. You can see were it is mounted by looking for the perforations in the door panel in front of the speaker. This speaker is a full range speaker.

Also, the rear deck speakers are ALSO full range speakers. They just suck so bad that some people think they are treble only...

 

Yeah... I was really surprised with the lack of quality compnents. I knew from previous purchases that most OEM setups are lower quality, but seeing how much they charge for the 500 / 1000, you would think that they would have put better components inside.

 

They use the cheapest, crappies speakers they can get away with. Then they normally equilize the crap out of the signal to TRY to get some semblence of a normal response curve.

The sad thing is that the S500 and S1000 DO use better speakers than the base system!

 

So how much improvement would there be just from replacing the speakers alone? I'm not going to get into replacing the head unit and adding amps. I just want to get the Shaker 500 up to the level of the Mach 460 that was in my '03. I was happy with that system, but he Shaker 500 is terrible.

 

You will definitely here an appreciable difference by replacing the factory speakers. Just buy a solid pair for both the front and the rear. Maybe look at spending between $75.00 to $125.00 a pair? You can always spend more, but at some point you hit the "diminishing return" unless your will to start sinking some cash down for dampning / deadening, a new head unit, amps and such.

 

So Im thinking about getting the 500 door panels so I can add subs to my base system.

I would not even want to guess how difficult thats going to be.

Wheelguner, when you put the 500 HU in, was the plug present in the cars wiring harness for the subs?

 

Like Bryman I would like to get some better bass out of my Shaker 500. Looks like everyone suggests new door and rear speakers as a first choice with Infinity, Fosgate and Alpine being mentioned.

For about $150 per pair, what would be the best choice?
tucsondivots

 

I went with Infinity Kappa's all around, plus JL Audio Subs with an Alpine HU. The Alpine lets you control the volume to the subs separately. The Kappa's are high powered speakers, so they actually only start to sound good at the top end of the Alpine's power. I would maybe recommend going with the Infinity Reference series if you don't plan on adding amps later on down the road. You'll get better ohm matching and probably better low volume tone.

I got my Kappa's on ebay for almost 30% off:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Infinity-Kappa-682-7cf...1QQcmdZViewItem