Hi! I have a 2000 ES300. Currently sporting the stock Pioneer setup except that I replaced the speakers with Boston Acoustic 2-way components up front and coaxs in the rear doors. Question is, I was given a broken Pioneer D1 and I fixed it. So, my plan now is as follows:

Re-wire the speakers and run them directly off the head unit (22 watts per channel rms), set up a low powered (100 watts max) amp for the stock Pioneer 8" sub. Now the Boston speakers I installed are actually designed as OE replacements and as such are pretty efficient. They managed to get pretty loud running off the stock amp.

Questions are... does anyone have any experience running speakers of the built in amp on a D1 or D2? Think they'll play loud and clean considering I'll be running them on an 80hz hpf.

Will the stock sub be okay with the amp input set somewhere around 50%? I'm guessing the stock unit is probably around 50-60 watts so that should be close....

Any recommendations or experience with this kind of setup??

 

Stock sub is mediocre at best, but running it with that amount of power should be fine (stock is actually about 80 w). Don't expect miracles, but it should suffice for some bottom end.

As for running the Bostons off deck power, you should be fine. Remember, power is logarithmic in nature. 1W = rated SPL, which is probably about 90 dB for yours. 10W = 100dB, and 20W would be about 102dB. That is plenty loud. If you want to ensure that all the power going to them gets used efficiently, I would highly suggest wrapping the mounting area with a viscoelastic (AKA Dynamat) like substrate. Panel vibrates less = power loss is minimized.

If you're going to run new wires rather than dicing/splicing, I would suggest 16 ga wire into the doors/rear. That way if you want to upgrade to a dedicated amp later, you're already ahead of the game and can simply connect to the new leads. Since you're going to be running an amp anyway, however, I would simply do it now and skip the other. Deck power is limited by the size of the heatsink, which is miniscule at best. Amps are ridiculously cheap nowadays, and extremely small for the power output. A decent 4 channel with 50 WPC is less than $120, and will certainly give you all you need for output.

Big Mack

 

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I have already purchased a spool of 16 gauge streetwire. I pulled out the box for the speakers, they are the SE series rated at 92db at 1 watt so they are pretty efficient. My concern with running an amp for the mains is that they will overwhelm the stock sub. Under normal circumstances I'd just get a JL sub but because the frame of the stock sub holds the grill/third brake lamp replacing it is problematic. I decided that, with the highly efficient speakers that running them off the head unit and the stock sub on a small map was the best compromise. Do you know if the stock Pioneer sub is 2 ohms or 4 ohms? I'm thinking I've seen 2ohms somewhere but haven't been able to verify that.