.............

[Brian_B]

After some hours listening to music in my ride, I am certain that the 2 ohm dual coil kicker sub (6.75") would have been a smarter buy than the 4 ohm Kicker I bought.

I am about to swap out a 2ohm 6.5” kicker if you wanted to try it. Although I suspect it wouldn’t do what you are looking for - power is power and that would help some but isn’t a replacement for an amp.

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[Just Rob Please]

I appreciate the offer but the cost to ship +speaker is probably terrible. I'm in Southern Illinois. Are you anywhere near?

 

[Brian_B]

I appreciate the offer but the cost to ship +speaker is probably terrible. I'm in Southern Illinois. Are you anywhere near?

Nope, sorry. CA

 

[CactusToby]

I do want to update something I stated earlier in this thread. This is in regards to someone upgrading their sub speaker but using a stock Ford sub amp.

After some hours listening to music in my ride, I am certain that the 2 ohm dual coil kicker sub (6.75") would have been a smarter buy than the 4 ohm Kicker I bought. Why? The low end in the mix is much quieter and you can't adjust this on the screen. I knew this would be the case. I am a college electronics professor. So I feel like an idiot. Until I amp the crap out of it, I'll take apart the back of my Bronco and return the stock sub in the stock box. It was pretty decent in the mix. Not as powerful as I wanted, but did a much better job of filling in the bass tones than this one. It is NOT the fault of the Kicker speaker at all. It's just starved for power badly.

I'm going to upgrade my sub amp in a few months and very likely to NOT go with a Key 500.1. I'm not sure the bang for the buck is there for a DSP solution on the sub. You could save $100 and run Kicker's 46CXA4001 directly from the stock amp's input lines. (Still need power from the battery of course). And I may just go for the tailgate speaker box at that point and keep the factory sub where it sits. I have a love/hate relationship with stereo upgrades. It's hard to know when to STOP!

Thank you so much for the rundown. I spent the whole week on this with too much in my shopping cart. I wasn't sure which way to go, but your writeup simplified and cleared up a lot of questions.

I'm mostly a talk radio guy but occasionally like to crank up my 90's hip-hop or grunge to teach the new generation. I have 2023 with 7 speakers (non-B&O).

I'm thinking:
-4" dash kicker cs
-6.75" kicker cs rear Mabett pods
-Kicker Key 200.4 with plug & play
-keeping factory kick panel speaker (most say it's decent)

Question:
-since i'm upgrading, should I upgrade with the kicker cs in the kick panels?
-which 2 ohm kicker speaker can replace stock subwoofer?

 

[SDbase]

I have a similar question about kicker key with stock speakers.

My set up is similar minus CS dash speakers. I added Mabbet pods and 6.75 kicker CS but was not satisfied with the sound even after forscan. I have a kicker key 200.4 and ordered plug n play kit 11-6 (kicker key harness, sub wiring and 10 inch hideaway sub since I have the kicker key already. I have the 2022 base 6 speaker setup currently.)

How do the stock front speakers handle the kicker key 200.4? As of right now I’m planning to keep the dash and kick panels stock.

hoping that more power to the rear pods plus the sub will give me the midrange and bass I’m looking for. Sounds like the stock kick panel speakers can give some decent sound and some midrange with the kicker 200.4. I just don’t want to burn the stock speakers out if they can’t handle the amp! Talked to Joe from plug n play says that a kicker key provides less than ideal power to run a full set of aftermarket speakers which typically like 100w power per channel. Maybe the stock speakers up front will respond favorably considering the shared channel allocating only 25w per speaker?

 

[Aquam]

While this thread has nearly no activity, I think it is important to reply to your question and outline a few things so a future upgrader can find it easier. I spent too many hours searching this forum to find out exactly what I'm going to type here. Yes, it all has been discussed here and there, but not in a complete way that I ever found. Information gets scattered between those with sub, without, with the fake sub and amp, and the B&O. This is only my opinion.

In a short answer to @Theo831 , absolutely. At least for me. And thank you @Nynus for posting the fuse location. Read on for details that I hope will help someone find what I learned.

I'm on the bubble when it comes to being an audiophile. I have very picky ears, but am a frugal spender. I've been a lifetime audio enthusiast as a hobby and musician. I am reporting my experience as a Bronco factory 7 Speaker non B&O owner.

If you are tight on money or just want to take this one step at a time, I recommend the following. But only if you are willing to run Forscan and make 2 changes.

1. Go buy a $6 bag of polyfill at Wal-Mart. Buy some 1/4" oe 3/8" window seal in a roll. Make sure it is easily compressable. Wrap the bottom rim of each speaker with it as you mount them. This will seal up air leakage. Do this for each speaker.
If you can swing it, by some 12" x 12" Dynamat or Killmat so you can deaden some of the resonating that will happen once you start cranking up the sound.
I also recommend Cruthfield for speakers. You get free speaker adapters and amazing support if you need it.

2. Dash speakers. Kicker 46CSC44's. These will immediately deliver amazing highs and a more accurate midrange. I used a 4x4" square of Dynamat directly underneath. There were a couple of pockets where a little polyfill can be packed in there. You will probably turn your treble down a little to adjust to the new bright sound until you get a Kicker Key 200.4 installed.

3. Mabett or IAG 6.5" speaker pods with Kicker 46CSC654. I cut the largest piece of Dynamat I could and placed it behind the speaker. Packed the pod with polyfill, window seal around the speaker, and installed. It will sound worse than stock until you do the next step.

4. Buy a Forscan USB cable on Amazon. Download Forscan and make sure you are careful how you use it. You can do this and it is worth every penny you spend on the cable. Watch Ragnar.Kon's video to tweak the EQ and rear pod settings. EQ needs to be OFF, Rear pods are set to Speaker / Tweeter. See exactly how to do this here:

5. This is a good stopping point if you are on a tight budget. You can tweak some things in the Bass/Mid/Treble settings on the Bronco audio settings and you'll see a pretty good improvement at this point. For me, the rear pods suddenly sounded amazing and made a big difference in the overall sound in the cabin. I don't know why people talk about this not making a big impact for the driver. It really made a good improvement for me.

6. Replace kick panel speakers. You could go with the same Kickers as the ones installed in the Mabett / IAG pods but .... I think you just need a woofer. No one could distinguish the highs from a 2 way speaker down in the kick panel. I bought a Sound Ordnance component speaker system and kept the tweeter and crossover in my inventory of excess stereo gear. The remote tweeter would be overkill since the Kicker 2 way's in the dah as so good. I just installed the woofer and packed this area with poly and some Dynamat. The sound was improved but know that this area is filling in a warm lower midrange only. I get a significantly stronger and less-muddy bump and rumble now. Note: I would not pack it wiht poly if you are one to sink your Bronco in water up to its neck. That poly will be a mess in there.

7. Now for the Big $$$ - I bought the Kicker Key 200.4 and wiring harness from https://plugnplaykits.com. It's option 11 as mentioned all over the forums. $500 or less shipped. While you're waiting for it to arrive, watch Ragnar.Kon's video as he wrestles with the install. He has a great video - shooting as he figures it all out. You watch it first, then when you dive in, you might find it goes faster than you originally thought. I dropped all the plastic he did except for the lower console area. I also didn't disconnect anything from my button cluster - just popped it off and pulled it out some to get to the control module far right connector. I plugged in the Y harness from plugnplaykits and tucked everything in nooks and crannys. The plugnplay kit will include a power wire with fuses. I ran that through the firewall by removing the rubber firewall plug and drilling a small hole in it to run the power wire from the battery into the area under the steering wheel. The entire install was about 2 1/2 hours. Make sure your gains are dialed down to the lowest point. The amp will have plenty of signal to boost. Lifting this up from the bottom will result in distortion quickly.

8. The honest opinion at this point is that the system JAMS! Everything is much more alive. But you paid $$$ for the Kicker Key's ability to auto-tune itself. Before you do this, pull fuse 146 as seen above. I did NOT do this the first time and the sub was causing the system to be consfused with the tune. The end result was absolutely terrible. Massive high frequencies and no lower end. So finding this thread, I pulled 146, re-ran the tune, and then replaced the fuse. Toggling between the Kicker's auto-tune vs no tune at all (short press the button to toggle) revealed at first a minor change in the audio spectrum. But, as I listened to various genres of music, I picked up on how much better it was with the Kicker auto-tune. Sounds were placed more spatially among the 6 speakers. It was fantastic.

9. As alive as the system is, the next thing for me to do was to swap the stock sub with a Kicker 48CWRT674 6.75" sub. This is the 4 ohm version to be a little easier on the stock amp. Use Dynamat to line the inside behind the speaker at minimum, and pack the box with poly. Use that weather seal around the rim of the sub. Install and test for rattles. You'll have a more accurate bass output that is way more punchy if you plug up the port in the box.

10. The last thing to do - which I may do later - is replace the stock amp with a bigger sub amp. I'm on the fence about this one. I'm over 50 and love it loud, but I'm not booming rap music or really anything in the top 40 on my system. Still, I like accurate bass and I feel like I have a similar amount to what I have in my very good home theater room when listening to music. So this may be where the returns diminish, at least for me.

Hope that helps a future Bronco6G 7 speaker owner who is searching the forums to do exactly what I did. Again, there is nothing 'new' in this post, but things are arranged in the unique way that I did it after searching the forum and reading for many hours.

First off, I just want to thank you for this detailed, clear post. That being said, I’m very interested in the poly fill method you used. When you stay “stuffed” , does this mean you filled the whole cavity full, in the speaker pods and sub, or did you just loosely line the sides. Looking to do the same as responsibly as possible.

 

[Brian_B]

First off, I just want to thank you for this detailed, clear post. That being said, I’m very interested in the poly fill method you used. When you stay “stuffed” , does this mean you filled the whole cavity full, in the speaker pods and sub, or did you just loosely line the sides. Looking to do the same as responsibly as possible.

Roughly one pillows worth of fluff should do it

Enough to fill it. But don’t pack it in as tight as you can

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