I have a 99 Vert, obivously I am looking to somewhat upgrade the top down sound quality.. Although I do not wish to change the Head Unit as I still want to keep the factory appearence. I am going to change the 3.5 in the doors and go with the infinity reference, but after reading many post they all say the rears do nothing for you and are only powered by the head unit. I was going to change these out with the infinity reference 5.25 as well.
Questions:
Would I see any benefit to installing an amp for the rears and beefing these up, one post I read said that not all the sound being processed is being sent to the rears. If that is the case could a guy run a crossover and amp and just put some sort of 5.25 sub-type speaker in the rear would that help any or maybe it would drown out the mids?? Just looking for anything that might make the rears more useful. Then again maybe it wont matter if I change out the 3.5 in the doors.

Thanks
Jason

 

you read my mind. I Too have a 99 vert and was just looking at a simlar option

 

I'm not a fan of rear speakers but if you plan on sticking with the Bose (and you have a drop top) I agree with replacing the rears also.
It is true not all frequencies are sent to the rears but, do not add an amp to them, it really is not needed. The rears get their power from the HU and also the frequency limits are also internal to the HU.
IMO, and the 3.5"s first. Then if you need more, go for Infinitys for the rear too.

 

I think that the replacement for the front 3.5" moving to the Inifinity is a good move. Definite improvement in sound quality and most likely volume as well being that they are more efficient.

Amping the rears only would not be a wise choice IMO. If you are going to make the effort to amplify speakers outside of HU power it should be to either add a subwoofer, or to improve the quality and volume of the front stage (generally done coinciding with front speaker replacement, usually a 6.5" and tweet component set).

You can also keep the factory HU and use a GM aux adaptor or something like a JL clean sweep in order to send a signal to an amp, as the stock HU does not have any aux RCA outs and requires an adaptor to manufacture some. A word of warning however, just like improving a cars performance, you are limited by its weakest link, and the HU in this case would be your systems weakest link, as the sound quality is marginal at best. We call is "blose" for a reason

G'luck on your decision, there are quite a few people on the boards here that added a HU and replaced a couple of speakers and are quite happy with the improvement over stock. Some people even just replaced the 3.5's and were happy. And then you have people like scott_fx and knew and myself that have eliminated all of the stock blose crap entirely. We can help regardless of your chosen path.

G'luck
Fej

 

well... what they said

 

Thanks for all of your input, I think I will try and replace the rears along with the 3.5 in the doors. If it is still not enough I might go with a sub setup. I also have a newer avalanche w/ Bose in it, great bass way too much highs (it has tweeters in the windsheild pillars)... Had a 94' vette with bose in it, now that one did blow, kraco would have been better choice... I just want to take the top down and have nice sounding music, Clear, bassy and also be able to hear it at 70 mph...



Thanks again

 

Clear and bassy you may not get from the stock Blose HU power bro, but then again it is all relative and what your ear prefers.

I would start with just the front 3.5's as a replacement and go from there. You will not gain much improvement in bass by replacing the fronts and rears and keeping them on stock HU power.

If you start with the 3.5's and feel the bass is still lacking you have saved yourself the rear speaker expense and can now apply that money to a sub and amp combo + an adaptor to make it happen.

Fej

 

The fronts will be a big upgrade but you gotta remeber you are still powerin it with the stock BOSE unit, it can only sound so good