I was thinking of getting a Zenclosure that will house the 10w7 sub along with a 500/1 amp from JL. Now when you guys upgraded your audio system, did you guys disable the mini-amp that powers the stock sub behind the driver's seat or did you leave it pumping? And how about the Bose speakers... Did you leave them and just added a sub and amp? I'm looking for a clean and rich sound from the system. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

NOTE: I have an aftermarket head unit (Kenwood XXV-05V)

 

You need to get a PAC audio if you don't have one already...

It will sound decent but not clean and rich IMO. My buddy heard my car with the Bose HU and with my Eclipse HU and immediately noticed how much better it sounded.

 

The problem is that the Bose head end or amplifier has been tweaked/tuned by Bloze to compensate for their weak speakers. Putting a good speaker and amplifier on that pre-distorted signal is just going to reproduce the Bose distortion very well. I don't know where the signals are tweaked ... the head end has lots of electronics and would be an easy location for Bloze to program the thing but the "amplifier" is also likely.

One of these days I think I'll try to science it out with a test CD in my old stock head end. I could fire the thing up on my test bench and measure the output with a spec-an to see what the signal looked like. Sounds like a fun experiment.

If someone has done this already or factually knows where Bose programs their EQ curves I'd like to know.

So I would like to see you replace the head end - even a "cheap" Pioneer/Alpine/Kenwood receiver for $150 or so is likely to sound better with your new system. The new head end will have built-in amplifiers for the full range speakers and an RCA output for your external sub-woofer amplifier. The front and rear full range speakers aren't much to brag about either and they ought to follow the rest of the system into the trash.