I am trying to put together a set up and was wondering if anyone would be willing to give me some guidance.

I am not looking for ridiculously amazing sound - however, the car is the primary place I listen to my music, so I want it to sound a notch above decent. I would like to spend no more than $1200, and because I am married, it would be best for me to spend that money in stages I also plan on doing the install myself, as I enjoy learning more about my car by working on it. Finally, I have a coupe, but keeping the trunk space (and as much other storage space as possible) is very important to me, as the car is my daily driver.

A few months ago, after I first got my car, I rushed out and picked up a HU (Alpine CDE-9874) and two pairs of some crappy two-way coaxial speakers. The HU meets my needs so I plan to the keep it - it has two sets of preamp outputs. I was thinking of running components up front and (eventually) a sub, so it should meet my needs. If there is an issue with it that I'm not seeing, please let me know.

The speakers are where I am having the most issues. I have read so many different opinions on how the speakers should be positioned that I don't know which direction to go in. Many people think that putting tweeters in the sail panels is a bad idea; others have said that it sounds fine. I have even heard people say that decent coaxials properly position can sound just as good or better than components. I am not an audio guy and don't care about the most precise staging of the sound - at the same time I know enough to know when the sound is significantly "off". For now my thought was to pick up a pair of components and put the mid-bass in the door and put the tweeters in the factory position. I would modify the grille of the door using the dremmel + speaker grille cloth hack in the DIY section. If, down the road, I'm not happy with that, I could look into pods.

I was thinking of running one amp for both the fronts and the sub. Something like this Alpine MRP-F600. My thought was to get the CAS glove box enclosure and the JL 10W3v3 and run it behind the driver seat. I would mount the amp somehow in the passenger glove box. This particular amp says you can bridge two of the channels and get 300 watts for the sub. That seems like it would be enough, but I'm not sure.

So I am thinking "Phase 1" would be a set of components ($200 - $300) and the amp ($300). Phase 2 would be the sub box and sub, bringing me to somewhere around $1200.

My two questions are - is 300 watts enough for the 10W3v3 (and is running that off of the MRP-F600 a good idea in general)? And anybody who considers themselves an "average joe" when it comes to car audio, what thoughts or experiences have you had with different positions of the components upfront? Of course I would love to hear from experts, but if you consider yourself one, please say so, so that I can understand what perspective you're coming from

 

I am bumping this thread and cutting down my question to this:

Will I have any issues running the JL 10w3v3 with the Alpine MRP-F600? Specifically bridging two of the channels, which according to the specs will yield 300 watts. Or would I be better off with the Alpine MRP-M500? I am not looking for excessively large amounts of bass, but I do want what I have to sound clean.

Thanks for any help you can offer.