Bump Bump w/o out much Cha-ching: sound sys for $500

This was taken from the 2003 winter edition of NOPI Street Performance Compact Magazine. It's kinda long so bear with me. But it shows some good sound systems for pretty cheap with room to improve on so here it goes.

"$500: Fast and Furious

Let's keep it real - at $500 you can't change the world, but you can make a world of difference to your stock system. First, we opted to keep the stock head unit and go straight to the speakers - that's where you'll get the most audible improvement in this price range. So let's pull out those dull factory units - most stock speakers don't even have tweeters! - and replace them with some very sweet sounding two-ways (coaxils) from Memphis Car Audio - the 15-ST60s ($120). At 6.5 inches in diameter, these will pop right into the stock holes. (Speaker models have been chosen by popular sizes, but all these companies offer models in other common factory sizes.) These4 little beauties have a ball-and-socket swivel mount aluminum dome tweeter that will allow you to shape the sound to work best in your interior. Plus, since we're relying on the stock head for its wimpy powerplant, we like the superefficient 93 dB rating - that means you'll get more volume and better performance with less power needed.

The midbass driver on the 15-ST60 is a polycarbon cone with a polyurethane surround, so it's fast and durable. But that's not all - this two-way unit goes most contenders one better by adding an external mounted crossover. This allows circuit to protect the tweeter from being sizzled w/o shutting it off and gives you the option of bi-amping the speaker when you're ready to add more power(in bi-amping you feed separate amplifier power to the tweeter and the woofer) and get better sound. Since the 15-ST60 can handle up to 100 watts peak power, they're good to go for your next round of system upgrades - very cool!!!

Let's face it - most stock woofers are fartier than a Farrelly Brothers movie. We want some real kick in the system, so we'll add the Kicker PS60 Powered Substation ($379.95). This may seem like a small box, but it will have your trunk pounding in no time. The Ps60 is a ported box with a 6.5-inch driver driven by its personal 50-watt internal amp. This port allows this box to get loud and proud, increasing the efficiency of the amplifier and the punch of the driver. That's a great combination. In this system, the Memphis speakers will deliver the upper bass, so you can load the Kicker unit into the corner of your trunk, set the low-pass filter and the gain on the sub box and your down the road in style."

There are 2 other sections $1000: Clean and Mean and $1500 High Deaf, but as you can see these things are really long to read. Even longer to type, so I will put the others up in a lil while.