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Stock amp wattage?


Captain Ficho

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I have a 92 Cutlass Supreme with the 6 speaker system. I found a used Alpine 130 watt amp locally for $50 and I was wondering if it would be a worthwhile upgrade over the stock amp? I am kinda curious what the stock amps wattage is since I don't want to downgrade over factory or anything.

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stock amp is about 20 watts per channel, give or take. I think you'll be fine upgrading :) I think your car uses the separate amp as a bass-booster for the 2nd coil in the rear speakers ONLY. The stereo powers the 1st coil in the rears, the fronts, and the tweeters in the dash.

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Sorry for hijacking, but my 94 had the same 6 speaker setup with the 2 sets of wires to the rears, and I always wondered if it had an amp. I know they were bi-wired, and that they were 4 inch dash, 4x6 doors, and the bi-wired 6x9s in the back. Where do they put the amps in these cars? IIRC when I hooked up my cd player (with factory harness adapter), I had bass and no tweeters, but didn't try wiring up the extra plug because I knew infinity's were going in the back pretty quickly, and they did. The 94 is long gone, but I've always wondered how that bi-wre/amp system worked. I know on the way back from texas, the factory deck had crazy bass, and decent highs.

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that separate amp is under the dash, on the drivers side. It's not even that big, about the size of a wallet. A stock 6-speaker system in the Olds just has dome tweeters in the dash, instead of the 4" like on the base stereo system. It's technically a 6-speaker setup but not really.

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Yeah what was I thinking there was dome tweeters in the dash now that I think of it. Do you still have the factory speakers? Hooking an aftermarket amp to factory speakers would be a pain because the tweeters on the 6x9's are wired seperate and probably run some crazy OHM value. THe other thing is the factory speakers can't handle much more power than the factory amp pushes. If you've already got aftermarket speakers hooking an amplifier to them would be a great upgrade. I had 100 watts per channel to a pair of pioneer 6x9's in my 94 cutlass and they actually sounded pretty good. I later upgraded to Infinity Kappa 3 ways, and now that they're in my Z24, I upgraded to an Infinity 4 channel amp pushing around 110x4 RMS. When I start driving my 91, It's getting either Infinity's or Boston Acoustic's all the way around and they will all run on that Infinity amp I have now.

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  • 1 month later...

Any aftermarket amp is an upgrade even if the wattage is the same.

 

Factory amps generally dont have the ability to keep a decent replacement speaker on "track". Slew Rate is a good term that comes to mind. Also considering the dampining factor is horrible on a stock amplifier... lol.

 

Just replace it.

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