questions about speaker install

I work at Pizza hut delivering pizzas and I just bought a nissan sentra to deliver in, because I was tired of tearing up my car.  Well i have a couple questions?  i spend alot of time in my car so I want to make the sound system great.  Well I guess the guy that I bought the car from had boston acoustics (which he gave to me and i'm going to reinstall them) well he rewired the whole car with speaker wire and didn't use the factorie wiring. Is there a benefit to this?  Also I also have 2 alpine 5x7's that I want to install.  I have 6 possoble spots to install.  4 in the doors and 2 in rear deck.  2nd question is if I installed all 6 speakers without an amp would it be better with just the 4.  I also have two infinity 12's I'm going to put in the trunck with an amp.  I had the twelves in my eclipse (hatchback),  so do you think the amp will overheat and shut off alot in the trunk? It would do it some times in the eclipse if I had the windows up and would blast for it for a while.  thanks Scott

Thanks.  I just got the car last week and just realized TODAY that there are no speakers in the rear doors, but like I said I want to put my alpines in them and I don't think It'll be that difficult.  Thanks Scott

P.S. I don't curently have and amp on my mids and highs and since the new speakers I have are boston acoustics that can handle up tp 150 watts a piece. I am going to have to get one.  Be fore in my eclipse My hu could keep up with my subs with just the alpines in. But probly not with the ba's.  So what amp is a good cheap amp to push my mids and highs?

Kinda depends on how loud you intend to play your music.  If you're not thinking about really really loud sound, but just moderately loud hq sound, then you might be able to get by with just using the head unit's amp to run a pair of speakers.   But it will be hard to match these up with the rest of the system.

The ideal situation would be to get a 4 channel amp to run all of these, as most 4-channel amps are 2 ohm stereo stable.  So technically you can run up to 8 speakers off of just one amp.  This way you not only maximize your amp's power (since they put out more power@ 2 ohms), but you have all the speakers coming from the same source of amplification.

You can't really go wrong with rockford amps, but depending on where you buy them they can get a lil pricey.  I have a profile amp (400sx white califnornia series) that i got from crutchfield about 5 years ago for 100 bucks.  It has been through a tornado (car was totalled, carpet was soaked) but the amp still keeps on chugging away.  Currently it's running an mtx 10" 6000 and never skips a beat.  If you do all the wiring correctly, especially from the amp to the speakers, and are using good quality speakers, and just in general do a real solid install you will probably be able to use a less expensive amp such as a profile.

One thing I've noticed is that a lot of people will push their stereo components past what they're designed to reproduce, and they let everything get distorted, or overheated, or they feed way too much bass to their coax speakers, and yet they still let the music play on, or they continue to create these situations which inherently cause damage to the components.  No wonder their stuff goes out on them!

In my opinion, part of the difference between different brands of amplifiers (like between RF and profile, for example) is that some of the more expensive ones are designed to take more abuse by their owner, but if you have common sense, and you take care of your components and know when to stop turning up the volume, and when to turn down the bass and treble, etc. you can easily be happy with the sound of a less expensive amp.  Of course this is just my own opinion and it is just a general obvservation but it's something you might want to think about. Admittedly there are many high-end amps that are simply amazing and would blow profile out of the water, but sometimes it's just not worth all the extra money.  On  the other hand, there are also some really crappy brands out there that even when properly used still have more problems than other systems.

Okay some people will write back and say i'm an idiot and that rockford amps put out more than their advertised power ratings.  Okay...but so what?  So instead of the amp putting out 300 watts RMS it puts out 325 watts RMS?  Is that worth an extra 200 bucks?  For me, it was and still is not worth the extra dough.

I'd stay away from profile subs/speakers and head units, but I've always been a big fan of their amps.  More bang for your buck in my opinion.

I wonder what some of the other "regulars" here have to say about this?