Thanks for all the good responses! To answer finch, my stock headunit is the tape/cd deck. It plays all of my burned CD's just fine and my speakers will get very loud and they sound good (much better than my previous Mustang speakers.) That's why I really wanted to simply add a powered sub. If my factory speakers were not as good as I think they sound, I would definitely be replacing them first. I have ridden in cars with friends who never replaced stock speakers and liked to try to rattle their windowns out. Their systems sounded like garbage from all the buzzing from the blown stock speakers. Since I don't really listen to rap or anything with really heavy bass, I am not worried about that.

I think I will look into a powered Bazooka first. One of my friends had a bazooka 10" at one time and it sounded pretty good. He was a bass junkie though. he started off with two Fosgate 12"s, then when he got a truck (the 12"shad been in a full size Bronco)he wanted some backseat room so he went with the Bazooka for a while and had it under the back seat. He now has another SUV and i think he has another large box in the back.
I also may research a single 10" with an enclosure, but I am worried about how to set up the amp since I have no experience there.

 

I never changed out the stock speakers in my 5th gen and once they were crossed to not go below 75Hz they sounded even better.

I made the mistake of not educating myself before I got into car audio and bought one of those pre-packaged deals from Best Buy. Luckily, I knew I wasn't dumb in choosing Alpine, but $600 for a setup I could've has easily bought for $300 online? Once I learned more I rewired the subs and tuned the amp and I love my system now. A friend of mine put a single 10" Type-R into his CRV and that thing bumped. If you searched hard you could get that sub and a decent amp for $200 or a little more.

 

It isn't any more difficult to hook up a separate amp and sub then a powered sub. You still need to run power and a remote signal wire to the trunk. Only real difference is you have to put the sub in a box and wire the speaker wires. I have a 10" Marine Bazooka in my boat. I am not at all satisfied with it, barley makes a buzz. Although the acoustics are much better in a car, I don't see it hitting as hard as say a JL W3 10". Its worth the tiny bit of extra effort to get a sub and amp combo.

 

Plus a great learning oppurtunity! I think you will be more satisfied with a nice 10" rather than the Zooka. C'mon, you're young, I know you like to crank up the stereo and feel the seats rumble. I think the Bazooka will be good for Enya and that's about it.

 

I agree, the 10' seems like the way to go. Plus, if you begin to feel the need for my bass you can always upgrade to a better 10'. With a Bazooka you'd have to get a whole new setup anyways.

 

Forgot to mention I had mine installed at Best Buy for $80 which I think was discounted b/c the guy took forever to install it (super busy) and it was the day I got my car back from getting fixed when I had my wreck! I also have a cap though so they charge a little bit more for that.

One thing though, is to buy the wiring kit off eBay. I got mine for $30 Audiopipe was the brand and kits at BB were over $100 for a bigger gauge wire.

I should have done it myself.

Your power wire with an inline fuse runs from the battery to the amp.
Your RCA cables run from the headunit to your amp on the opposite side of your power wire.
The negative cable from the amp can go anywhere thats grounded. Mine is screwed into the underside of the trunk.
Then you have wires from the amp, to the back of the box to the subwoofer and your done.

 

I found:

- 2ohm 10" Alpine Type-R for $90
- 4ohm 10" Alpine Type-S for $55
- Alpine MRP-M650 600WRMS @ 2ohms for $190
- Alpine PDX-1.600 600WRMS @ 2/4ohms for $230

Plus:
- 4' x 4' sheet of MDF for $12
- Box of 1-5/8" decking screws $3
- Tube of silicone caulk for $5
- Wally World wiring kit - $30 max (700WRMS)

You could do all that for $300 or less and get 10x the sound.

 

I paid $40 to have them install just the amp. They are a bunch of lazy SOBs there. They run your signal and power right next to each other, if they get noise in the system, it's cheaper and easier for them to just make you buy a ground loop isolator for it. They blow at tuning the amp. They tuned mine to Breaking Benjamin and it sounded horrible.

Wally World kits are just as cheap and no shipping. Copper is copper, it's not like the super expensive wiring kits at BB get a better scientific element. I stupidly paid for an $80 8AWG (or was it 4?) Rockford Fosgate wiring kit at BB.

Mine is screwed to an exisiting ground under the trunk particle board panel... Keep in mind to keep the ground under 3' long.


I wired up my new Accord myself and it took a hell of a lot less time than BB did. Hardest part is getting the wire through the firewall.

 

The main reason I am afraid to buy the sub and amp separately is I have no earthly idea how to tune an amp, what amp to buy (wattage and how many channels), or any of that stuff. I'm a total audio n00b.

 

Tell us your budget and we can piece something together for you.

Subs: Alpine and JL make some damn nice subs.

Amps: Single channel aka Mono (ever heard of stereo bass? me neither.) Class D for power efficiency (don't want to drain your stock batt do we?) The best way to find an amp for your sub is to match the RMS power handling at the same impedance (i.e. if you have a 4Ohm sub that can handle 600W RMS an ideal amp would be something that can throw out 600W RMS at 4Ohm.

Tuning: The stock speakers can handle down to 75Hz okay... so you would was to set the Low Pass Filter at about 75Hz. That means the sub will play everything from 20Hz up to 75Hz. 63Hz is also a good setting... You can also adjust gain (4V to 12V) and Bass EQ (0dB to +12dB). There's not set way to tune it, basically tune it to what you like and so that it doesn't distort at louder volumes, which a fully powered Type-R doesn't really do...