GM Kicker subwoofer review

dieselfan1 · January 3, 2021

I got a GM Kicker powered subwoofer and all new speakers installed over the weekend.

Total plug and play except the dash speaker wires . Had to splice those no adapter available I guess, no biggie.

I went with the Kicker setup that has a 200 watt amp for the sub and a separate 200 watt amp for the rest of the speakers. Got it at shopchevyparts.com

I replaced the door speakers with Kicker CS series 6"x9"front doors. 6.75" round in the rear doors. Kenwood Excelon 2.75" dash speakers. Got this from Crutchfield. They give you free wire adapters and mounting brackets. Nice.

I had a few hurdles but not too bad . I took my time and did everything by the book. Hushmat around the speaker openings. Wave breaker foam pads behind the door speakers.

I removed a back door panel first and had a hard time getting it back on right. The other three I left them on at the top part and just propped it up enough to get at the speakers. Way easier and faster. Other than 1 connection issue, after I fixed that, it fired right up.

It sounds good . Not going to win any competitions but I'm pretty sure it will blow away any bose setup GM puts in a high country or Denali.

Way better than the stock setup. The stock speakers are paper. Need I say more.

Not as loud as I thought it would be but at full throttle no distortion whatsoever. Crystal clear highs and mids.

The bass is pretty good too but when its get way down low, I mean way down there, it has a little garbage .( I got a song that has the lowest bass I know of,

" Life is a bowl of cherries" by a band called 94 East. It growls.) For the most part its what I was looking for. Plug and play. Without going to an audio shop and dropping $2500.

This whole setup was just over $1200 and it was a fun little project to kick off the new year.

If you are on the fence on this one, get down and go order it. I give it a 9 out of 10. Get new door speakers too.

As a side note my truck don't fit in my heated garage( it's too tall, nice problem [emoji16]) so I built a plastic tent[emoji471] and did the whole install in my driveway but it was 65°.

It was about 20° outside. [emoji3063]

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fatkid24 · January 4, 2021

My favorite part of this write up is the garage with “tent!” I’ve got a lawn service and have had to do some work on my mower in the garage in July/August when it’s 100+ out and have rigged up an AC to make it work. Gotta get it done. If you can make it comfortable, you might as well!

dieselfan1 · January 4, 2021

I also have ac in the summer but I doubt I'd ever do that again but who knows. If it was down around zero I would have waited for warmer weather for sure

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xSHIFTxNASTYx · January 8, 2021

Does this require having the initial Bose setup in order to work? Thought it required something from the head unit to be plug-n-play but only the Bose systems have that. I don't have the Bose system but already upgraded my door speakers. Slightly annoyed with them though, have some distortion at 75% volume. May have to rethink the door speakers later but I need more bass, that "I can feel it in my butt" bass.

dieselfan1 · January 9, 2021

Does this require having the initial Bose setup in order to work? Thought it required something from the head unit to be plug-n-play but only the Bose systems have that. I don't have the Bose system but already upgraded my door speakers. Slightly annoyed with them though, have some distortion at 75% volume. May have to rethink the door speakers later but I need more bass, that "I can feel it in my butt" bass.

Non bose.

It's all plug and play.

They sell two different setups like this. One if you have bose , one for non bose.

The bass is pretty good . The other amp for the door speakers makes a huge difference. Tons of bass from the door speakers.

For the money you could do better with a big sub box, 2-10's, and a big amp but this was easy and sounds good.

BTW the reason your new speakers don't sound that great is the stock radio has little power. I'm not sure but I would guess 10-15 watts.

The amp that comes with this setup is 200 watts . More than enough to make them sound good.

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xSHIFTxNASTYx · January 9, 2021

2 hours ago, dieselfan1 said:

BTW the reason your new speakers don't sound that great is the stock radio has little power. I'm not sure but I would guess 10-15 watts.

The amp that comes with this setup is 200 watts . More than enough to make them sound good.

This is one reason why I want to overhaul my system further and add an amp to give the door speakers more juice. I went with Sundown all around and honestly feel they should sound better than they do.....which is why I'm thinking they aren't getting enough juice. Can the amp for the door speakers be added without the whole sub setup or does it come as part of the kit?