Kind of long, so bear with me. I have a '99 Buick Regal LS w/ Monsoon sound. The rear left 6x9 speaker started to buzz all of a sudden. It would rattle during decent bassy music. Sat back their quick and verified it was the woofer itself, not the grille. Fine.
Went to Best Buy and asked for a 'comparable replacement' for the speaker. They found some Alpine 6x9's and said they should be replaced in pairs. Fine. On sale for a decent price so had them put it in. Fine.
Worthy note: The Monsoon system by itself with a flat EQ and a good remastered CD signal puts out a very nice sound. Nice impact bass with very good frequency response.
Started it up and the bass is GONE! Nothing! Totally gone. Before I left the install bay, I went right back up to the guy and said 'There's NO bass!' He explained that the factory Monsoon speakers have a certain power requirement that isn't very high (apparently because the system comes with a
200 or 220 Watt 8-channel amp to drive the 8 speakers) and that the new set had a higher power requirement (250W max, 70 RMS/channel). He said I needed to purchase an additional amp to drive just those speakers. Fine.Went in, and the fun begins. Found an Alpine amp for sale, then I needed a $85 wiring kit, plus the additional labor to put it in. Great. We're up to $400 now to replace a stupid speaker. The spent a LONG time installing the amp (up to about 5 total labor hours) and got to a point where when they turned the key to ACC, both amps would work. When they then started the car, the new amp would cut out, no sound. Lovely. It was 9pm and they said to come the next day (last Saturday) and they would fix it. At that point, here were the issues: when the sound was muted, there was a decent amount of speaker hiss coming from the new speakers...the balance from front to back was TOTALLY in the back, plus, it would intermittently power the new amp every other time I started the car. Bad shape. Fine.
Came the next morning, and the two head guys worked on it and 'fixed' it. They fixed the hiss, fixed the front to back balance. But, one moderate item remains. When the car is on, it works fine. When I switch it to off, the new amp turns off. They front speakers stay on until I open a door. That stinks. Plus, they left one of the right rear panels not back together, just cosmetic. Also, with these new speakers and new amp, the sound quality is as good if not a little worse than before. I guess that shows how good the stock Monsoon system is.
SO, I'm going tomorrow night to have them put it ALL back to normal: take out and return the new amp, take out the new speakers and replace the original ones. I am a decent audiophile, but after this, I'll live with the buzzing for now. My wife is expecting her first any day, and I didn't realize $110 speakers would turn into $450 total parts & labor (and this is after a $50 credit so far for my troubles).
Moral of the story (and point, if there is one) is that sometimes, Best Buy stinks. My main beef is that NOONE at all ever explained to me that these new speakers would have no bass output and that they needed to be powered, and that all this equipment would come to over $450! That's what I'm most pissed about.
Beyond that, if you've read this far, I read a few other Usenet posts saying 'stay away from adding or changing anything on a Monsoon with any non-Monsoon parts,' and a GM dealer would charge $360 for parts & labor to replace both 6x9's in the rear with the correct OEM speakers and labor. I guess that's an option. What's stupid is that I could have spend less money (probably $350 to $375) and got a subwoofer complete setup from Best Buy that includes the box, 2 subs and an amp! Very silly.
Any other options for what I could down the road? Would it be a big help to do a sub-$400 subwoofer addition?
Thanks for reading and for any input.