Gilbertd wrote:

If you have the low line system, you'll have 6.5" woofers in all 4 doors with tweeters in the front. Tweeters have a capacitor on the back of them to block the low frequencies and are connected in parallel with the woofers. In this case the plug on the loom will be a standard DIN 8 way plug that will plug straight into the speaker socket on a standard head unit. The mid line system has the same as the low line system but adds midrange speakers in each door, still in parallel with the woofers and again has the 8 way plug. The High line system adds the steering wheel controls, amps in each door (so attenuators are needed to drop the speaker level output from a standard head unit down to a level suitable for the amps) and the sub in the LH side of the boot. The amps incorporate a crossover network so feed the woofer from one output and the midrange and tweeter from the other. The high line has a 10 way plug on the loom as it has the sub output as well as the 4 speaker outputs so won't fit into a standard head unit (which normally use separate phono sockets for a sub output).

So, if you have the low or mid line system, you can plug the speaker plug into a standard head unit and it will work fine (which is what I have). Originally my car only had the Low line install but I changed the door panels for ones with the midrange speakers so upgraded it to the mid line install. Unless whoever installed yours has been playing with the wiring, which they shouldn't need to do, then all 4 channels should work fine. However, the woofers do have a habit of seizing meaning they can't move so even if it has been wired correctly, you'll get no noise. In which case, see the upgrades thread and get yourself a pair of JBL Stage 600CE speakers for the front and put the existing front ones in the rear.

Hi there, this comment has helped me massively, can I ask you three more questions:

I have the low/mid line setup, no amps on any of the doors.

Currently my Sony head unit is plugging in fine, the front speaker outputs seem to be powering all 4 doors though (front and back). Is there a way of correcting this as my head unit has 55W per channel if I can make use of all 4 channels (front left / right, rear left/right), this would help as I’m planning to upgrade all the speakers in the doors. Alternatively, I was thinking I could adapt my iso adapter to bridge those outputs from the head unit so that 110w of rms is coming out of each of the channels, to compensate what arrives to the speakers?

Second question - do you know of any powerful mid range speakers to replace the factory fitted ones?

Third question - it would be ideal if I could somehow just get a feed direct from my new head units and then be able to fit my own crossovers in the doors as it suits me. Currently the cables coming out the doors are already specifically low / mid / high, is there a way of getting just normal full range to the door? I don’t know where in the car the cable is being split into 3 and crossed over, do you? If I knew that then I could rewire at that point rather than have to run new cable