Proper way to wire 6 speakers?

ok guys....i own a 88 Ford Mustang that has the 6 speaker option?....well this particular vehicle that i own doesn't come with 6 speakers...the doors do have holes for speaker placement but no wiring...so i want to upgrade my sound system (of coarse)

I choose autobahn's cause they're user friendly and i love the way they sound....currently i've wired the a pair of seperates to the front and fabricated placements for the tweeters...the back i decided to use the factory housing seeing that it's only "fill" anyways.... now my question...

how do you "properly" wire another set of speakers with what i have now (6 speakers total) to just aftermarket radio? I know if i had a 4 channel amp then i'd wire my staging and leave my fill (rear speakers) wired to the factory radio..... 

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It sounds like you know what to do, that is prob the best idea i can think of. You could run all six speakers off a four channel amp and have one channel to spare if you bridge each set.  A freind of mine has a tahoe with the six speaker setup and thats what he did, it sounds alot better than runnin one set off the head unit and the others an amp.

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Fortune: You will continue to take chances, and be glad you did.

vdubmk4 wrote:

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It sounds like you know what to do, that is prob the best idea i can think of. You could run all six speakers off a four channel amp and have one channel to spare if you bridge each set.  A freind of mine has a tahoe with the six speaker setup and thats what he did, it sounds alot better than runnin one set off the head unit and the others an amp.

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Well honestly the reason why i'm asking is because i want to take my amp that's hooked up to the staging off cause i plan to sell the car soon....so once i unhook my staging (2 pair of front speakers) from the amp then i'm just wondering how to hook them up to the aftermarket headunit?  Thanks for the reply though...

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You're situation did a complete turnaround.  Why would you want to pose the question like you did in the first place??  Don't answer...don't need to know...

Best thing to do now, after you take out the amp, is to connect one pair of fronts and the pair of rears to the head unit.  If the person who buys the car wants to use two pair of fronts like you did, then he can install an amplifier.

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Build the box so that it performs well in the worst case scenario and, in return, it will reward you at all times.

stevdart wrote:

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You're situation did a complete turnaround.  Why would you want to pose the question like you did in the first place??  Don't answer...don't need to know...

Best thing to do now, after you take out the amp, is to connect one pair of fronts and the pair of rears to the head unit.  If the person who buys the car wants to use two pair of fronts like you did, then he can install an amplifier.

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I appreciate the response you've contributed, but i totally understand that the new ower/buyer of this vehicle has that option....but the questions/topic/post was mainly for my personal knowledge (for future installations,and/or projects) on a "proper" way to wire 2(or more) set of components (staging) and your a set of rear speakers in the rear (fill) ....thank you

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Okay, I'll put it like this then:  don't connect two pairs of fronts to a head unit if you are also using a pair for the rears.

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Build the box so that it performs well in the worst case scenario and, in return, it will reward you at all times.

stevdart wrote:

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Okay, I'll put it like this then:  don't connect two pairs of fronts to a head unit if you are also using a pair for the rears.

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ok gotcha....i apologize if i sound some what annoying though but i believe in exposing stupidity to acquire knowledge....so i'm going to ask the question regardless......

breakdown: what you're saying that in any system/set up that involves more than your "basic" 4 speaker set up then an amplifier's must be included in the equation?

Ex: Factory 6 speaker system=means factory amplifier?

If so then thanks for the clarification.....i was under the assumption that a 6 speaker (or more) set up was possible without the use of a factory/aftermarket amplifier...

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there are two ways that you can do this depending on why you want to hook up two sets of fronts/rears.
1. if you are doing it because you are using component speakers and you want some to do highs and some do mids then you can just wire up a crossover and hook two speakers to one just through it.

2. if you want to hook up more than one set of full range speakers so they both have the same frequencies comming out of each then you can wire the speakers in serries. however, this will raise the impeadance of the load up to 8 ohms with standard car speakers so your deck will only supply 1/2 the rated power to them. this might be ok with low wattage speakers but is going to be disapointing if your speakers are around 50watt or so. the best way to deal with this is either find some 2ohm full range speakers so wireing 2 of those in serries will bring your total load up to 4 ohms which is what the deck wants or get an amp which as far as i know is the only correct answer. and yes lots of cars come with factory installed amps.

~warren

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Warren, why would you wire them in series, wouldn't you wanna wire them in parrallel ?

Also i don't see how ur answers apply to his question of the six speaker arrangement. No offense. However, PuppyDawg, if ur just gunna sell the car soon why even bother messin with it, patience is the key here i believe.

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Fortune: You will continue to take chances, and be glad you did.

if you wire two 4ohm speakers in parallel it will drop the total impeadance of the load to 2ohms which will fry the deck, if it was meant to run at a load no lower than 4ohms. if you run them in serries, it will push total impeadance up to 8ohms wich will make the music quieter, but will make your deck from smoking.

my answers were general answers on how to hook up more than 4 speakers to a deck that only has four outputs. he was asking about hooking up 6 speakers to a 4 output deck so i thought it would apply seeing as how 6 is more than 4.....

~Warren

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I had Cheetos and wine for dinenr.

In general, you can connect as many speakers as you like to any amplifier channel, as long as you do not exceed the impedence limit of the amplifier.  This is what Warren is discussing: basic Ohm's law series-parallel wiring.

The most common way to accomplish your goal is by using passive crossovers.  The function of the crossover is to filter the electrical energy produced by your amplifier and direct specific portions of the energy spectrum to specific loudspeakers while maintaining a relatively constsnt impedence load on the amplifier.  This is how almost all multiple-driver setups function (including most OEM setups with "6 speakers" or more.)

So to answer your initial question, there are at least three basic ways to skin your problem.  First is by providing individual amplifier channels for each speaker in your system.  Second is by wiring them together in such a way that your avaialble amplifier channels can handle the load, and third is by connecting them together with a properly designed crossover network.

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Thank you for your replies (ladies and) gentlemen, i appreciate your time and responses....i didn't really want to discuss the situation itself (selling my car story) but rather the technique itself for my own personal knowledge instead of satisfying the buyer of the vehicle.....honestly i could care less for the wire set up of the vehicle when it's sold (as i'm going to install a cheaper amp to have 6 speakers function properly) but i was seeing if there was an techinque/actual way, or "proper way" (again for my personal knowledge) that you can wire 6 speakers to an aftermarket headunit (with pre amp outputs) with no problems, but thanks to you guys i got my answer...thank you all!!

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