Mercedes SLK 230

I have a 2003 Mercedes SLK 230, which has the factory Bose stereo. The car has 8 speakers. One tweeter and midrange speaker in each door. There are two subs - one behind each seat. There is a mid-range in each kick panel, but they are not hooked up (I don't know why) I am installing a new head unit, but am not sure if I want to hook up all the speakers or just use the door speakers and the rear subs. Any suggestions regarding how many speakers and how to set them up would be great. I want the system to sound great and thought soemone out there had experience with multiple speaker system. How do you balance such a system? Thanks

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 RE: Mercedes SLK 230

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Originally posted on 04-25-2007 by SirGolfGod
I have a 2003 Mercedes SLK 230, which has the factory Bose stereo. The car has 8 speakers. One tweeter and midrange speaker in each door. There are two subs - one behind each seat. There is a mid-range in each kick panel, but they are not hooked up (I don't know why) I am installing a new head unit, but am not sure if I want to hook up all the speakers or just use the door speakers and the rear subs. Any suggestions regarding how many speakers and how to set them up would be great. I want the system to sound great and thought soemone out there had experience with multiple speaker system. How do you balance such a system? Thanks

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 SLK 230 Update

I have a 2003 SLK, so earlier years and especially newer years models likely will be totally different. I purchased a pioneer AVIK N3 unit used, which is what I am putting in the car. It has 4 x 50watt outputs and pre-amp outs for L & R + a mono port for subs. First off the CD is fiber optic - that's all. The rest is electrical. The speakers are all 4-ohm. There are 8 speakers which do not have any crossovers built onto them. The rear subs are about 6 inch (didn't measure them) and point backwards so they rears are passive reflex. The amp has internal crossovers for the tweets and subs. I hooked up the new head unit as follows: I wired the 50 watt rear channels into the amp. The pre-outs didn't work so the amp needs full power coming from the head unit. Just doing that made an amazing difference in sound quality. I then hooked up the speakers in the kick panel to the front 50 watt outputs so all 8 speakers are working. There is a slightly fuller sound. I think maybe the imaging is off a bit, so I'll play with the those. I am holding off on buying new speakers and am reading several books on imaging to see if the kick panel speakers need to have a different frequency range. Anybody have any ideas? I may play with a crossover on these just to see how it sounds. I also am thinking the existing kick panel speakers may come on when the top is down. Got to check that out. The slk 230 came with a phone which has an antenna unit mounted on the trunk top. I removed this and mounted the GPS antenna on it. It looks factory installed. I still need to mount the Satellite antenna and thought I might make a combo cover for it or just buy another cover and stick them side by side. I'll post the wire diagram next.

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