Hello everyone! Interesting thread and glad I found this place!
I own a 2005 TJ Rubicon. Previous owner did not take great care of the vehicle and I'm working to fix a lot of that. The sound system in this Jeep is sub optimal.
The PO installed an Alpine CDE-153BT head unit. The sub was not working or blown and all the settings on the head unit were jacked up. I did a little bit of research on the subwoofer replacement and that was the first thing I replaced. I watched YouTube videos on how to do it and found this sub to use:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019WYPLIA/?tag=wranglerorg-20
I didn't want to replace the factory amp because I'm not confident in my wiring abilities (or lack thereof). I had a little trouble getting the sub to fit in the box. I removed the plastic ribs without any problems. The sub has these flanges that prevented me from seating the rim of the sub into the opening in the box. So I had to modify the opening some to get it to fit. I also had to modify the plastic cover for the amp to be able to accommodate the magnet. I finally got the sub seated correctly and it works with the factory amp. Victory! Yeah, not quite.
Even with the sub working and the settings on the head unit adjusted, the speakers in the speaker pods are very high-pitched with no bass. The sub doesn't make that much difference unless whatever music is playing really bumps. Even then the pod speakers don’t sound good.
Now, occasionally I do some things that aren't very smart. This might be one of them. Instead of doing some research to replace the speakers in the existing pods, I went ahead and bought this sound bar thinking that 6 speakers are better than 2 (even with the mixed reviews):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000MIT5VA/?tag=wranglerorg-20
Here is the issue I have now...the current speaker pods are wired separately with each pod having its own wiring harness. The speaker bar only has one harness. It did come with the wires to run to the head unit but I really didn't want to have to pull the head unit to re-wire for this speaker bar. Additionally, the wiring looks really cheap. I have this sinking feeling that if I use this sound bar that I'll be opening Pandora's box and have to replace the component speakers and redo the wiring.
Has anyone changed out the pods for a sound bar like this? I’m open to suggestions..