I just bought a nakamichi 35z head unit and im a virgin when it comes to car audio, any tips or special adapters parts or what ever i will need to put this thing in? and i have no problem soldering if i have to.
also any suggestion on a good set of speakers to replace in the rear i know they need to be 6 1/2s but im lookin for clarity not loud.

I'm not sure if they sell a harness for your radio, try crutchfield. But as far as speakers goes, I like Polks new line and it is very clear. This is what I have for the front (http://www.polkaudio.com/car/products.php?category=15&speaker=119) and rear. (http://www.polkaudio.com/car/products.php?category=18&speaker=118)

First of all, what kind of head unit is it now??? Ive honestly never heard of that brand of head unit, or that company for that matter. What about purchasing a head unit like a pioneer, alpine, blaupunkt, kenwood, something along those lines. They are fairly easy to install. All you have to do is get the wire harness specified for your car and then its simply connect wires, electrical tape them, and you should be ready to go.

Originally posted by NismoNx2000
First of all, what kind of head unit is it now??? Ive honestly never heard of that brand of head unit, or that company for that matter. What about purchasing a head unit like a pioneer, alpine, blaupunkt, kenwood, something along those lines. They are fairly easy to install. All you have to do is get the wire harness specified for your car and then its simply connect wires, electrical tape them, and you should be ready to go.

The Nak, is one of the better head units you can buy! It has the look of a very basic head unit, with exceptional sound quality, I was going to buy one until I found that they do not support mp3 media.

Back to the original question, as for an installation of this head-unit, find a local audio dealership that sells Nak's and ask for an adapter for your car (this way you don't have to cut your old wiring harness), and you might as well get a universal adapter for mounting also.

As for speakers, IMHO, go with the fronts 6 1/2 and tweets only, I have talked to alot of different installers and sound buffs, and they agree that your sound will be much better with no rear speakers. I did this myself, polk audio 6 1/2's and tweets and a rockford fosgate deck, and the sound quality was great. As for the 6 1/2 speakers fitting in the front, all I had to do was buy mounting rings for the speaker and trim the inside of the doorskin, but this was only with my install, you might not need to do this.

Hope this helped!

Monty

so about the harness and the mounting bracket. will just any universal mounting bracket work? and for the wiring harness i saw something like that at k-mart im not sure for what company that converts the connector of nissan factory harness to something else, you talking about something like that? if it comes down to it i have no problem jerry riggin something up.

and will the mounting bracket thats in there for my stock unit work?

Originally posted by Fonque
and for the wiring harness i saw something like that at k-mart im not sure for what company that converts the connector of nissan factory harness to something else, you talking about something like that?


Thinking about it longer, I remembered that the wiring harness adapter that I bought for my car was just a generic wiring harness that plugged into my car's OEM harness, then the other side of the generic wiring harness were just loose wires that you wire into the harness of the new head unit. Don't worry, you receive a drawing with the generic wiring harness that tells you left/right speaker, power, ground, accessory, and so on.


will just any universal mounting bracket work?

I don't think I can help you on this one, I can't seem to remember what type of adapter I had bought.

Monty

There is a specific wiring harness adapter for nissans that you can find at auto-zone ( and I think even walmart ). You would then splice the adapter to the head unit.

You can get by without it, but the adapter is only $9. Besides making the job smoother, it removes alot of questions about wire color <-> function.

As for speakers, IMHO, go with the fronts 6 1/2 and tweets only, I have talked to alot of different installers and sound buffs, and they agree that your sound will be much better with no rear speakers. I did this myself, polk audio 6 1/2's and tweets and a rockford fosgate deck, and the sound quality was great. As for the 6 1/2 speakers fitting in the front, all I had to do was buy mounting rings for the speaker and trim the inside of the doorskin, but this was only with my install, you might not need to do this.

Hope this helped!

Monty [/B]



well.. from what i know. and i know alot.. in order to get good sound from the rear speakers you need to get coaxil... the sound stage is much better and relieves stress from your tweeters up front, Try to have your tweets no more than 2 inches away from your mids...

thats all for now

no no no... hehe from a major sound buff (who has owned many installs worth more than most of his cars, and a head unit that cost more than a 93nx in perfect condition lol).


Anyways....

Nak makes good stuff, very high end - however I haven't heard their stuff recently, like a lot of brands, I last heard them at best buy when they lowered quality in order to try to please the masses, I hope they went back to their norm. (that was like 3+ years ago). But again good stuff nice choice.

Front speakers:
Components would be best, plenty of room for the tweeter in the sail panel thingy (the plastic that mounts to where the side view mirrors are).
6 1/2"s fit in the stock location but require some hacking (4x6 stock)

As for rear-fill
1. You don't want tweets in the rear - think about it - real audio, as in a concert or true stereo, the singer is in front of you, not behind you - the rear should be a reflection of what you hear in the front, which is normally a. delayed, and b. muddy (lost some highs) (dolby simulated surround sound does this)
2. Go for a good mid-bass woofer, if you have to get components just axe the tweeter, or if you get a co-axial thats cool, I'm guessing you won't be competing or anything.

I have some MB Quarts in the rear of my car, and while I haven't gotten an amp in yet (McIntosh on the way), they sound like shiznit...... litterally, not good at all, I think the NX has horrible acoustics (door panels/rear area).

In the front I have some kenwood components (guy before me installed them) - I think MOST of my sound issues are from a beefy speaker (needing more power) and a head unit pushing out 8-10w rms if I'm lucky..... IF you get any really nice speakers, consider an amp, even a 35wx4 actual amp will be WAY better than any 50wx4 head unit......

I'm GUESSING that the amp will help some, I already have an aftermarket head but the speakers are cutting out horribly. I'm going to run a single 8" sub to pick up the bass and cut out anything but mids and above to the rest of the speakers.

Hope it will help....

As for other cars.... I'll soon post pics of the red NX I did a swap in and sold to my sis's boyfriend. He's got three clarion 10"s, pioneer head unit, clarion DPX1000.2 amp, and clarion's new high end 4x6 components in the doors - it sounds VERY good (even though he likes it a little on the bassy side) Rears are stock and cut down a hair.

Chris

hmm then how would 4x6 with tweets in the front with some fairly bassy 6 1/2s in the back *** i dont think ill be getting a sub or an amp for a while at least not till the end of the summer.
How bad do you think it will be with those speakers and a nakamichi and justleave it at that?

Replacements should and probably will impress you big time over stock, however if they sound shitty at higher levels, could be that they are underpowered. Thats the problem I'm having because of having to crank it to overcome wind noise.

Chris

what do you mean by "shitty" at high levels? like unclear when the volume is up? or not enought wattage pushing the noise through the speaker?

Meaning the tiny amp in the head unit is clipping at high volumes. The new speakers take more power to make the same amount of sound than the OEM speakers, its a trade off...
Send lots of good power to oem speakers and they still sound shitty and will fry
Send little power to killer aftermarket speakers and they sound shitty.

Lots of good power to killer aftermarket speakers = happy speakers and happy people hehe




Chris

Originally posted by MauiBlueGride
Meaning the tiny amp in the head unit is clipping at high volumes. The new speakers take more power to make the same amount of sound than the OEM speakers, its a trade off...
Send lots of good power to oem speakers and they still sound shitty and will fry
Send little power to killer aftermarket speakers and they sound shitty.

Lots of good power to killer aftermarket speakers = happy speakers and happy people hehe

Chris

LMAO! Point Set and Match! LMAO

I just saw this post.

Being an installer for almost 16 years now and having a countless amount of systems to boot I'd say I'm qualified to answer here as well.

So far Maui has had the most correct answer and you can tell he has owned a few systems. Mainly from the rear fill/concert analogy. (common way for installers to explain that)

Your deck was the second to the top of the line from Nak for that year. The highest being the 45Z and both being very nice head-units. As for the harness, all you have to do is to get the Nissan harness for your year and wire the ends to the Nak harness. They are colored coded for the most part and it is not hard to do.

You do not need a dash kit due to the fact that Nissans are "iso-din" mounts. What that means is that when you take the old radio old there will be brackets on the side of the factory radio. Take those off and look at side of the Nak. (MAKE SURE THE SCREWDRIVER IS HELD IN THOSE BRACKETS TIGHT OR THE SCREWS WILL STRIP.) There will be 2 holes on each side, probably marked with a "N" to let you know which holes to use. If they are not marked then use the only 2 holes that make it line up like the factory unit did.

Although you did not need the dash kit itself, for asthetic reasons try and locate a 1/4" iso din trim ring to make the install clean. You will not be using the trim ring that is on the Nak cause it will not fit. Pull off the Nak trim ring and put the 1/4" one on right before you put the dash back on.

Now for the speakers. Like Maui said, go for making the front the better speakers. If you plan to amp the speakers then put a beefy STANDARD 6 1/2" speaker in there. If not then look for a speaker with a higher "efficiency" level in. The more efficient the speaker, the less power it takes to make it loud. That Nak is actually a pretty powerful head unit at a true 43w per channel. (Stated as that on their URL=http://www.nakamichi.com/auto/cdplayers/cd_35_specs.htm]website[/URL] .) A decent pair of speakers should actually sound pretty good. You don't sound like you are out for a killer system but good sound. Also with that in mind, go ahead and put the same coaxial speaker in the back. Use the fade to improve the front "staging" or "imaging" and be happy there. Again like Maui said using the concert reference, try to make most of the sound come from the front and what appears to be an "echo" or "rear fill" come from the back.

One of the biggest misconceptions that people have in car audio is that too much power is always the killer of speakers. Distortion is what kills more than 90% of speakers. A factory radio will kill a HIGH dollar set of speakers just as quick if not faster than the factory speakers. In the same respect, a set of factory speakers WHEN crossed over can handle a pretty large amount of power. Another one is just because a speaker says 200W doesn't mean that you have 200W in your system. That just means that the speaker will handle 200W in a certain frequency range.

If I missed anything please feel free to ask or email me at tunez4523@yahoo.com or you can go to my web-site at www.onsitemobile.com. That is a co-owned car audio installation business that myself and my brother in law do on the side. He can answer some of your questions as well.:D

Well said :-P

Chris

thank you very much that should be mroe than enough information to get me started. The reason im so picky about my sound being clear is i have played the sax for a little over 10 years and it irritates me to hear muddy, unclear, or out of tune sounds

bass does not equal balance :P

for my next question since the stock size in the front kicker panels is 4x6 what would i need to do/buy to get some 6 1/2's to fit?
hmmm so by your theory it would sound clearest to have some say 6 1/2 with tweets up front and what size for the rear will a 6x9 fit back there or will i end up with 4 61/2 speakers?

Be better off with 4 6-1/2s than to try and make a 6x9 work in the back. In the front make sure and stay with a shallow speaker, maybe 2" at the deepest. There is a bracket that adapts the 6-1/2" hole to the 4x6" opening. Remove that bracket and the 6-1/2" will work fine. In my car I actually used a DEEP 6-1/2" and mounted it to the door panel instead right over the same hole. The is an option to look at if the ones you buy are too deep. It was a pain though so go for the shallow mounts. In the rear I think you have about 2 1/2" of depth to play with.

man your stereo must sound nice!


so should i add bass blockers or crossover, or is that only if i go with the tweets in the front with the 6-1/2?

in order to get at the front speakers do i have to take the whole door panel off? or can i just take the speaker cover off? i tried to pry it off with a flat head screw driver but i dont think it can come off that way and when i looked in my fsm it doesnt appear to be a separate part TIA!