Long time reader, first time poster...you know..a LTRFTP!

Anyway, I'm upgrading my stereo piece by piece (wish I had the money to do it all at once, but what are ya gunna do?) I have a '04 F-150 Screw Lariat (pure love).

I just picked up a pair of Eclipse SE8373 and put them in the front doors. If anyone has any experience with these speakers, I'd love to hear from you. The mids and highs are crystal clear, but the bass is almost non-existent unless I turn up the volume really high and then it's just that distorted slapping sound. Plus, I have to turn up the sound about twice as much to have it as loud as I did with just the stock speakers.

Am I getting this poor of performance because of the speakers themselves...or, is it because I still have factory in back and no amp (possibly under-powering the speakers)?

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. I've learned so much from this forum on just about everything else. (though I'd love to find a step by step illustrated guide to remove the rear doors for this year model).

Thanks all

 

I just put these speakers in my wife's '03 Mercury Mountaineer. I put in 2 pairs, front and rear. I also installed a new Eclipse CD5444 H-U.
The speakers call for 40 watts RMS with 80 watts each for peak power.
The CD5444 puts out 50 watts per channel peak. RMS is probably under 25 watts.
I am very happy with all levels on these speakers. I am guessing that your stock H-U is way under-powered.. I think under 10 watts per channel RMS.
See if the owner's Manual has the specs for factory unit. This might answer your question.
Good luck.

 

Just a thought, but are the positive and negative wires hooked up correctly? If they're backwards, this might account for the low sound/high volume problem.

 

JDPollen is right, it could likely be an issue with your truck. But this would only occur if 1 of the 2 speakers was wired "backwards". In effect, this wiring setup doesn't harm the speakers, but the speakers fight eachother. The sound waves cancel eachother out, and it happens most obviously with the bass. Mids and Trebles sound like they are coming from a tin can, very hollow sounding.

Hope it is as simple as that, if it is wired correctly, it isn't likely that you have significantly less bass, just you have so much more treble, it appears to be less....

 

Would put my money on your head unit not having enough power to thump em.

 

With the speakers, I bought the wire converter plug whatever (sorry, I'm electrically challenged) from Best Buy. They only hook up to the speaker one way as well as the plug from the truck for the speakers. So, I'm pretty sure the wiring is allright unless both plugs that I bought are just crap.

Not enough power through the HU makes sense thinking about it. But I do want to keep my stock HU (I don't want to buy another 6-disc in dash player), but an amp would take care of that, correct?

Thanks again all.

 

LariatB-
An amp can solve quite a few problems Since you're running a stock H U, you're not going to be getting hardly any power pumped to those speakers. I owned an 01 Jeep Grand Cherokee (save the jokes for later) and put pioneer's in the doors...and they sounded horrible compared to the bass that the stock speakers put out, Then and only then did I come to the beautiful realization of Amping door speakers.

An amp will give you the power you need to really push the low end out of those speakers . . . Just my two cents. A great amp that I've heard (and i'm quoting Ram SST....who has an amazing setup BTW) is the Profile Baja 4 channel Amp. It powers the speakers for a relatively cheap price....around 80 bucks on ebay. Amp your setup and you'll have the same epifany that i had. Good luck! rock on

 

Thanks once again Merek3CS!!! And your right....for the money (IMO) you can not beat the Profile Baja series amps great. I have one thats around 5 years old and has been in 4 different trucks and it still sounds great.

Lariat B what your experiencing is an SPL issue. SPL is the sensitivity rating of the speakers. The higher the SPL rating the the more bass you get from less power. Cheap speakers (stock ones for example) have higher SPL ratings than most higer quality speakers do. This allows the speakers to be able to handle more power and thus make more bass...the only problem is it does take more power to make more bass.

The SPL rating for the Eclipse SE8373 speakers is 94db...I have no idea what the factory speakers are rated at but I am sure they are much higher. Get an amp and you will be very happy with the new speakers.

 

Awesome. Thanks for the info, guys. I did check out all your pics, RamSS/T...beautiful truck and that stereo kicks man!