Bankswood

I think I'm going with the alpine ktp-445u. I have an after market dd pioneer unit and I was told the alpine was plug and play. Has anyone installed this amp and was it truly plug and play or did you have to do some splicing. Also did it really improve sound?

TIA

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

Any decent head unit is going to have pre-amp RCA outputs, so yeah, that's about as plug 'n play as it gets.

If you have your Pioneer spliced into the factory wiring, then the answer depends on if it then splits out to RCAs or if you need to convert the signal to something the Alpine accepts (line in). Either way, it's doable, but not quite as simple as just running RCAs directly.

An aftermarket amp will have way more punch than the factory amp, if that's what you're comparing.

Bankswood

Actually I was hoping to unplug the stock amp and plug in the Alpine. Guess not.

t2d2

iTrader: (8)

If the Alpine has line-in (speaker level inputs) then you can probable do that. Some amps come with speaker wire terminals or an adapter. Otherwise, you can pick up a line level adapter separately.

If it were me, I would just run new RCA lines from the head unit to wherever the amp is. KnuConceptz (sp?) has lots of good offerings for $7+ on eBay. You'll probably get better sound quality that way, and you could probably run the wire in under 10 minutes, including rear seat removal to access the wire grommet to the trunk.