Speakers to amp

[chevymotocross]

Hello everyone! My audio equipment in my 87 silverado consists of a pioneer head-unit, sony xplod 4 channel amp, 10'' kicker truck sub, and the 4 factory sized speakers which have been upgraded to pioneer. The system hits, well, I should say the sub hits hard. The problem is, the sub is overpowering the vocals from the 4 speakers. The only thing hooked to my amp, is the sub. The 4 speakers are powered by the head-unit. Should I
a: hook the 4 speakers to the amplifier along with the sub
b: leave the 4 speakers hooked to the head-unit as is, and instead, add kickpanel speakers hooked to the amplifier
c: not sure if I could add the 4 speakers and sub to this amp, if not, what about just the fronts and sub, with the rear corner speakers powered by head-unit?
d: a different recommendation?

I don't want to simply lower the bass power to my sub to compensate for the high-mid speaker loss, since I like the hit it gives. If I do end up having to wire the 4 speakers to the amplifier, what is the easiest way to get the front dash speakers, wired to the amp, since after-all, they are way up front and already wired to my headunit. The rear corner speakers I guess would be easier to re-direct to the amplifier since they are right there. I guess that means I would have to also pull out my headunit and disconnect those connections to the headunit, since I'd be using the amplifier to power them. The amp has low pass and high pass filters, so hooking the speakers, to the amp, I could use the high pass to filter in only the highs, while having my sub still connected on the low pass filter, to filter only in the lows obviously.

Regards, Gary

[chevymotocross]

it's a 600w amp btw

[chevymotocross]

oops, sorry guys, forgot I could have just modified post instead of adding that reply.

[bfofish]

Does your deck have a subwoofer control feature??? Also check your amp to see if it has a filter switch on it(most do),for just bass it should be on low.

[chevymotocross]

Does your deck have a subwoofer control feature??? Also check your amp to see if it has a filter switch on it(most do),for just bass it should be on low.

The deck has bass control (i guess this would be subwoofer control?) and mid/high control. They are both turned all the way up. I don't really want to turn the bass control down, since I like how it hits. The amp, has the low pass filter, which is just sending low levels to the sub, which is great. It also has bass boost and gain adjustments on the amp itself, which are all the way up. If I were to hook speakers to the other channel on the sub, I can use the high pass to filter only the high notes, which I guess would be what I'm looking for.

[bfofish]

The deck has bass control (i guess this would be subwoofer control?) and mid/high control.

No that would be your regular tone controls.
If your deck has a sub output control feature it would be seperate from these.
How loud do you turn it up before the sub over powers the vocals?Try turning the gain on the amp down a little bit at a time to see if you can get some more volume from your other speakers,without loosing too much bass.

[chevymotocross]

The deck has bass control (i guess this would be subwoofer control?) and mid/high control.

No that would be your regular tone controls.
If your deck has a sub output control feature it would be seperate from these.
How loud do you turn it up before the sub over powers the vocals?Try turning the gain on the amp down a little bit at a time to see if you can get some more volume from your other speakers,without loosing too much bass.

Yea, I guess it does not have the sub control on the deck. I don't have to turn the volume up too high before the sub overpowers. Should I turn the gain down a bit, like you said, or should I instead turn down the low boost level on the amp? I also realize now, that if I wanted to power the speakers with this 4 channel amp, I could actually only power 1 pair, since the sub is already occupying the rear channel.

[bfofish]

My best advice would be to start with just the four speakers at the volume that you would normally listen at,then slowly add the bass boost and gain until you find a level that you are happy with.By turning the bass down you can gain the volume and get almost the same amount of bass in the long run.This is how I learned when I installed my first system .I had just about your same set up and had to toy with the levels before I was happy with the sound.

[werewolfx13]

Decent advice, best solution is to run a 5 channel amp, OR an amp for the sub and a 4 channel for the 4 speakers, OR, an amp for the sub, one for the rear speakers, and one for the front. In these trucks, you really don't need rear speakers at all if you have a sub..the rear speakers are there for rear fill only, you shouldn't be able to tell they're there..I use 6x9's in boxes behind my seats for midbass/rear fill, since I don't stock a low profile sub, and all of the subs I keep on hand have very deep baskets.

I'd use just about anything but a sony amp for your front speakers..I've seen a LOT of sony amps severely garble the highs on a good set of full range drivers, and almost all of them sound like trash on a good set of components..