Adding rear speakers cheap yankee style- can you help?
 

I have a '99 base with the Becker CRD-220 and the 4X40W amp up front. The stereo sounds great for what it is, but I'd like to add rear speakers. Played around with this kind of thing BITD, but that's a long time gone, and I only ever had enough knowledge to get me in trouble. I've searched the forum but have not seen particulars for my situation. From everything that I've read, it seems like I have to upgrade to the 6X amp, but I'm not sure, and if so, I'm not sure why. There are no relevant diagrams in my owner's manual or in the 101 projects book. The stereo head unit has a fader control that works so it seems like it's ready for a set of rear speakers. It seems like if you wire from the head unit and bypass the amp that you get a power mismatch, so I assume you can only wire speakers from the amp.
There are these empty "slots" (term, anyone?) for wires in the side of the amp where it seems like I could connect rear speakers -see second picture. I took a spare speaker and ran wires into the empty slots while the radio was on and got no life out of the speaker. Then I connected to the wires already there in different combinations, and the speaker came alive.
I'm a woodworker and will have fun making my own speaker boxes.

1.) Is there a way to connect to those empty slots to get rear speakers to come alive? (Would I have to wire from the head unit to the amp to make that happen?)

2.) Or, could I connect to the existing output wires and just have the rear speakers double up on the signal from the front speakers? Or is that bad form and I would overload the amp or weaken the signal?

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You can't use a 4x40W amp to power the rear speakers, I guess if you really wanted to you could splice them in, but I don't see why you would do that when you can run the rears of the Becker head unit. The HU provides less power, but it still works, I had mine that way until I found a 6x40W amp from a 996.

Why not? Is it the amp? The reason I ask is because I've a 4x100 Rockford Fosgate powering the 2 dash and 2 rear deck speakers. My sub is self-powered. x4 means 4 speakers, no?

Why wouldn't his 4x40 amp power the rear speakers? I mean... if it's x4, and only 2 are now powered (I'm asuming, as his post doesn't reveal how many speakers are now connected), why wouldn't the other/remaining 2 "slots" work?

Thank you.

If interested, I've got a Haes 6X40, DSP, and CD changer for sale, individually or as a group. All taken from a 2000S with 42k miles on the clock. Replaced with a Polk 5-ch amp.

+1.....................

I guess if you only had dash speakers you would have two free channels to power the rears, but I'm still not sure it would work since the door speaker channel might not provide the correct range since the doors are meant to act like woofers. If you already have four speakers (dash and door) and you spliced in the rear speakers your dash speakers would be underpowered.

You can run the rears of the Becker HU and everything will get the correct channels (although the rears will get 15W instead of 40W). And if you want to use a 996 amp it isn't that expensive, a 6x40W amp is around $100-120, be aware that there are two versions of the 6x40W amp.

As a point of reference, my car came with only the CDR 23 radio and the 2 speakers in the dash, no amp and no door speakers. I installed the factory rear speaker kit that was supplied to dealers and followed the Pelican Parts how-to article on how to do it. My car is a 2003 with the MOST Bus, but the Pelican how-to article is for all years. Adding the rear speakers greatly improved the sound quality, but it would likely be a lot better with a good amp and better speakers.

The problem with that specific amp is the rear channels power door speakers which are subs, and that channel has a frequency filter to only send the bass to the door speakers.

I suggest buying a 6 channel from a cabriolet, then run speaker wires from rear to front. The fader will then work, and the doors still work as subs.

As a note if you spliced front and rear it would affect the speaker load and no fader. If you used the rear channel eliminating doors you would have no upper frequency range.

I replaced my amp with a 996 cabby unit as suggested by Cunningr above I then added 6 speakers to the rear deck shelf and replaced door and dash speakers.