I'm looking at changing my shaker 500 eventually and I have started looking around on the net for he various components. I want to put in the JL Audio XR653-cs 3-way set up in the doors. Tweeter/midrange in the upper part of the doors and mid-bass/sub in the lower factory sub area. The speakers are rated at 70 watts continous. Does that mean the tweeter can do 70, the midrange can do 70 and the sub can do 70? When they talk about "channels" in amplifiers, would one side of this 3 way set-up be considered 3 seperate channels or 1 channel? I'm thrying to see how many amps I would need. If every piece is a channel, then I have at least 8 channels:

1. tweeters(2)
2. midrange(2)
3. midbass/sub(2)
4. Two or Three-way 5x7/6x8's in the reasr deck(2)
5. a one or two sub box.(1 or 2)

I am thinking of getting 2 Rockford Fosgate P4004's. 50 watts x 4 to cover all these channels, but are generally coming from the factory a little higher. Would these be strong enough? Not sure yet on a sub amp yet. Any thoughts would b appreciated,

 

The JL Audio XR653 comes with a passive cross-over which means that you will only need two channels to drive the set - one for each side. The crossover looks after splitting the signal up and delivering the right frequencies for each of the drivers.

IMHO a two channel amp delivering ~100 watts per channel would do the trick.

There are other options. Try Googling for 'diymobileaudio forum' or 'elitecaraudio forum'

 

Have you thought about the a-piller for a tweeter location? Highs are right at ear level.......

 

If a three way speaker is rated at 70 watts, and you have one on the right side, and one on the left, then you'll want a 2 channel amp. You'll run one set of two wires (one positive, one negative) to each speaker. You will not need to run 3 sets of wires to each speaker. Clear?

Don't forget, for general purposes, a higher power head unit will drive most full range speakers just fine. If you're just replacing for better sound, then you can use the head unit to run your front upper door, and rear deck speakers. Then you can get just one 4 channel amp, run one channel to each of the two front lower door speakers, and bridge the rear two channels to a single sub.

Really, there's tons of options. It just depends on what your goal is.

 

It sounds like I only will need one 4 channel amp like the Rockford Fosgate P8004(100wx4) to drive the front component system and the rear deck 6x8's. I would get seperate amp for a sub or two in the trunk.

I will need a new head unit, I wanted to get one anyway, but now that the car is lowered, the factory one skips from time to time.

 

or you could power the rear deck 6x8s from the head unit itself, the front components from 2 channels and the sub(s) from the other two channels of a 4 channel amp. The 6x8 drivers in the back wont need a lot of power and you may find you don't even need them. If you go with a mono sub(s) you may be able to bridge two amp channels to give you more power for the sub. Lot's of ways to things - just depends what you want.