Just out of curiosity, I know a lot of you must have upgrades in the audio department on your trucks. What brand stereo, speakers etc... are you using? What works, what doesnt, what dont you have that you wish you did, that kind of thing. ALSO... if wanting to keep the factory look, how can you set it up so you can play music from your phone or ipod?

 

I couldn't take the pitiful factory cassette deck and awful sound any more. After trying a couple different things, I finally settled for an inexpensive Kenwood deck, Jensen 4channel amp, and stock speakers replaced with some "Pheonix Gold" brand. I was on a budget and I did all of that for around $300 (including wiring, which isn't cheap). I'm happy with it and it was money well spent. Not impressive to car audio enthusiasts, of course, but makes driving my truck a much better experience.

The amp, although a cheap model, is well equipped with a pass-through rca output. Some day, I'll probably add a couple smaller subs and another amp. Cut the lows out of the full-range speakers and use a monoblock amp for the sub(s) to take care of the lows.

You can get crazy with this stuff, just depending on how much you want to spend, how much work you're willing to do, and how much you want to chop up the interior.

 

I have a sony xplod head unit, with USB and AUX to play the phone or I pod. In the doors I have kicker 5 1/4 speakers, they really kick. In the back I have sony xplod 5X7 speakers. Their quality sucks, the kickers will easily out play the sony's. I have a alpine amp powering 2 kenwood excelon subs.

I am going to completely re do my audio system someday though.

 

Kenwood Bluetooth radio and a Rockford punch speaker set up with dynamat. I have a 12 inch type r waiting for me in Tucson. Bluetooth on the radio is helpful in these trucks especially with a stick. I had my iPod set up corded and I kept pulling it from my ash tray when the cable lay on the wrong side of the shifter.

 

Forgot to mention that my Kenwood hu has an aux input, as do most or all new aftermarket hu's. I don't use it, though. The CD player will play mp3 format, so I usually burn a CD in "data" format and have 150ish songs. I may switch between 2 or 3 cds and I don't have to worry about iPods and cables and stuff. I may go a week or 2 before even ejecting a CD.

 

if you want to keep factory stereo and have a cassette player on your stereo you could get one of those cassette adapters that allow you to plug in your phone via stereo jack.

 

Man, I always hated those things, lol. As cheap as new aftermarket head units are, and considering how easy they are to install in these trucks, I would suggest a new one. LordV is right, though...that's definitely an option if you HAVE to keep the stock unit. Just remember that playing digital quality through the tape deck results in tape-quality sound.

My Kenwood hu was $80 and came with a pair of 6.5". You can find hu's on eBay that are under $50 and still 10x better than a factory cassette player. I swear to you that the $80 I spent was the best mod I've done so far!

 

I bought a cheap pioneer hu along with alpine door speakers and pioneer rear speakers. It ran about 300 for everything but sounds great, if I ever change anything it would be replacing the pioneer speakers with alpine.

 

I have a dual hu currently that I plan on swapping out for another with Bluetooth streaming the radio in my car spoilt me.
Have Rockford fosgate tweeters and 6 3/4 up front and some kicker 6x9 in back indeed to add an amp eq and sub later not sure if I'll switch to kicker or rf yet.

 

What was the first year a CD player was available in our trucks? Also...thoughts on best speakers for the money? My thought has always been you can have the best of everything else but if you have crap speakers...well...it's crap. Like many things...it's only as good as the weakest link.