Eliot

What did you do?

Rewire? What Sort of Speakers, HeadUnit, Amp?

oneill_1

I had my brother and neighbor help me out w/the installlation. I have a Alpine deck with two 6.5" alpine type s in the front doors, two 5.25" alpine type s in the rear deck/dash, two old 12" alpine subs powered by some amp. the brand of the amp is Performance Technique and it is a 1000 watt 2 four channel amp. Amp only powers the subs because the deck has sufficient power for the four interior speakers. I plan on installing the two dash speakers sometime soon with alpine type s; i believe they are 4" or something like that.

The power cable and speaker wire (that go to the subs) is under the door sills/carpet on the side of the battery. The rear seat is very easy to take out and to feed wire through.

For the interior speakers, I kept the same connectors the MB uses but put connectors on the other end so that I can change speakers in the future much easier.

crr1612

all i did was replace the stock radio, bypass the fader, remove the stock amp, and change the front and rear speakers.(this is on my old car) the head unit i bought to replace it was an aiwa, with pioneer 4" in the front and 5.25" eclipses in the back. i lef the doors stock because they still sound great. if i had replaced the doors, it woulda been with type r's to make sure i still got a lot of bass from the doors. definitely bypass the fader tho

RHW

My 300ce is in the shop right now getting "Tri-amplified" (each range of frequency has it's own amplifier, the amps ar not required to replicate full range)

25 watts on active crossover for the tweeters only
100 watts for the 4s and 6s with a passive crossover between them
250 watts for two 8" Subwoofers

Alpine 872 / 310 NAV combination
JL500/5 amp

Speakers = Diamond Hex and Silk tweeters (6" & 4" & tweeter)

My 300TE wagon and 380SL both have the same stereo with Becker Trafficpro Nav headunits. I always travel with navigation friendly head units.

Koolwipski

I replaced the head unit with an Alpine unit - works awesome. Bypassed the fader, removed ALL the stock amps control units, re-wired the speakers and antenna to the new head unit.
I was not aware when i started my project (which was finished by a professional installer) that the radio in the dash is simply a control panel, the actual radio is in the trunck on the passenger side trunk wall behind the carpet. All you speaker wires, amps, antenna wires, etc... go into this box. This is why the speakers and antenna have to be re-wired to the head unti in the dash. (I know most of you know this - thought I would throw it out there in case someone is going through what I did trying to figure it out)

QUESTION - I want to replace the dash, door, rear deck speakers? Anyone have the demensions for the speakers for a 1992 400E?

Bigpete123

I have had one installation, and am currently in the middle of doing my second. It's a huge *****!

My first system:

-Nakamichi CD-400 head unit (sounds fantastic and looks factory)
-Focal Polyglass 100v-slim (4") speakers in the front dash
-Lower-end Focal 5.5" speakers in the rear dash for fill
-JL Audio 500/5 amplifier (5 channel)
-10" MB Quart sub, mounted in rear deck in a sealed enclosure. It was flush-mounted to the underside of the rear dash... this didn't work terribly well, so I won't go into detail of how I did it.

System I'm currently installing:

-2 Layers of Damplifier Pro sound deadener in "hot spots" (i.e. doors, trunk, behind and under the rear seats, rear dash). I highly recommend Damplifier Pro- it's pretty much the same as Dynamat Extreme, but it's WAY cheaper- it's butyl-based.

-1 layer of Second Skin "Overkill" (this is a closed-cell foam mat that goes over the damplifier for extra sound deadening)

-Nakamichi CD-400 HU

-JL Audio 500/5 amp

-Audiocontrol EQS (6-channel trunk-mounted equalizer)

-Focal 3-way speakers in the fronts (the same exact tweeter and 4" speaker as my previous ones, with a 6.5" mid-bass woofer). This will require me to build new fiberglass enclosures in the map pocket area of my doors... it should be a *****, but it will be worth it I think.

-Matching Focal 4" component speakers in the rear (the ones that used to be in the front).

-Infinity Kappa Perfect 10VQ sub. This will be installed Infinite Baffle, meaning no formal sub enclosure. Infinite baffle subs use the trunk as the enclosure. The big thing about this installation is that the back of the sub has to be perfectly sealed off from the front. Since the trunk is already pretty well-sealed, I just need cover the metal holes in the rear deck and seal them up... and then I'm ready!

-In lieu of the rear-deck sealing, this means that I will have to make custom enclosures for my rear 4" speakers. I will make them out of a combination of fiberglass and MDF.

This project is definitely going to stretch throughout most of the summer. But when it's done, I think I will be very happy with it!!

RHW

Pete- awesome system!!!

if you use the NAK's rear channel internal amp to push your "rear fill" speakers and use the 25 rear channel amp in the 500/5 to push your tweeters only, you can bi amp easily. The amp can do a cleaner job by only asking it to focus in on the high side...as well the mids' amp(s) can do better if they are not required to reproduce the tweeter's frequency.

The internal active crossovers in that 500/5 enable bi amping and tri amping with little effort, and it opens up your music noticably, imo.

davebear

how do you bypass fader in 1989 300E just jump the connections?

hellah fresh

hey.. How the heck do i remove the speakers from my dash?? its seems soo hard to get out with out messing up the dash...?

Bigpete123

The speakers in your dash are just held by clips. Just stick a flat head screwdriver in there and pry them out. Trust me, they'll come out. Here's a link that should help you:

http://www.mercedesshop.com/Wikka/W124Stereo


RHW, thanks for your kind words. I never even thought of the possibility of bi-amping. I didn't realize I could do that. I will definitely research it further. I don't want to send too much power to my tweets and run the risk of blowing them... The nominal (RMS) power of my tweeters is only 15w per channel (peak 100w). So I'd just have to tinker with the input sensitivity...

According to Nakamichi, the sound quality of the unit increases when I turn off the internal amplifier. So I wonder whether the tradeoff would be worth it. What do you think?

RHW

That is why I have that JL 500/5 in three of my cars. It makes tri amping a system easy. You have everything you need...dialing down the tweeters is easy, and if you are worried about making a mistake, order a "bass blocker" (cheap little inline resister - looking item)

When tweeters have their own individual amp, the sound feels like liquid, fluid, open or something. People who say they do not have an ear for stereo immediately take notice...even at low volumes. I am not a high volume nut, but I love the clarity at mid volume.

In my opinion, if you test run your wires into a true biamp configuration, you will say you never knew your current components (excellent components!) could sound so good. Thats true even if you had to add a $75 amp for rear fill...(I'd listen to NAK about turning off the internal amp)

Bigpete123

That's a good point... I could just pick up a crappy amp for my rear fill. hmm. Now you got me thinking!

Bigpete123

RHW, I sent you a PM... I don't want to hijack this thread! Thanks.