new stereo

For any of you who car - since I know a lot of you

well, I finally got around to putting a new stereo in my Accord. It's gonna become my daily driver now, so the stock stereo won't do. I kept the factory CD radio/cd player, mostly because it has the steering wheel controls and looks VERY stock :rofl: . I ran the speaker wires and a cat5 cable down the center console and the LPL cable. I have an Audio Control EQL and a Pheonix Gold 500.4 mounted on a carved peice of MDF in the far back left corner of the trunk. I used the other 4 wires in the cat5 cable (tied together) for the auto turn-on - mostly because I forgot it until after I had put the interior back together. The speakers - a pair of CDT HD 52's in Qforms mounted in the kick panels, and 2 JL audio 8W3V2 to be fiberglassed into the doors. The CDT's are getting 75 watts RMS each set and the 8W3's are getting about 125 watts RMS each. Actually a pretty simple system but with just a basic tuning, it sounded really nice. The best thing is - it looks REALLY stock.

And I guess I appeased the gods of car audio because there is ZERO engine whine. I absolutely could not believe all of the electronic boxes and wire harnesses going down the center and both sides of the car. I was afraid I was gonna pick up noise, but I have been preaching UTP's run down the center console - so I had to practice what I was preaching. Now that I think about it, I should have run the cat5 down the left side and tie wrapped it to the power wire ... just to see what effect it would have.

wow... I am surprised you went CDT and popped in some JL stuff. Could bring yourself to get a elmental 8?

so did you join the dark side or the light side when it came to subs? basically, ported or sealed?

Sounds nice

I've always heard bad things about those Qforms though. Made out of cheap plastic, don't fit quite right, and don't provide a solid baffle for the speaker to mount to....how are yours?

the enclosures are sealed, I always liked JL audio - just a preference thing. My first preference for satelite speakers is usually Focal, but I decided to try the CDT's since I have heard so much about them. The Q-forms for this car are VERY good fitting, they hold up in place without even screwing them down. The plastic feeling material is kinda thin so I may take them out and put a put a layer of fiberglass or bondo on them before I screw them down Since the 8's will be in the door, I can crossover higher than you would with say 12's in the trunk/hatch, so I don't think the lack of a true enclosure is gonna hurt them that much. As usual, I WAAAYYY over spent - but this was the one time, do it right and get it over with thing. I still have the CRX I can play with

after listening to the CDT's tuned, I am very impressed. With the supplied passive crossover, they really have a sweet sound. The 8's in the doors seem to be a good match. Everytime I listen to the setup, I know I did the right thing. It looks as factory as possible, and I gave up 0 trunk space and it sounds great - those were my objectives from the beginning

I put some pics on a web site on sounddomain

http://www.cardomain.com/memberpage/621430

Good deal Paul....did you know that you can retain your steering wheel controls and use an aftermarket source unit?

I have wondered about that ..... how hard is that to do ?

My next uprade would be an alpine head unit and the audio control DQT, but that may be a while - like thanksgiving time

Peripherial electronics makes a piece that will convert your steering wheel controls over to IR output. All you need is the piece and a head unit with IR remote. It is a very simple install and works well. If you do not have a Peripheral dealer near you I can ship you one.

ok, I have seen that kinda thing ... I thought you were talking about an adapter that would allow me to hardwire it. On the harness diagram, there are several wires that say don't use - I am guessing 2 or three of them are for the steering wheel controls.