My old amp bit the dust on the left channel recently and I had an equalizer in my system that was sounding weird too. I replaced both today, I bought an Autotek M1000.4 amp and Autotek 7007 eq/line driver from Sonic Electronix. Today was the first day I had time to work on my system and the Autotek amp sounds great. Plenty of power and a good clean sound both on my Kicker KS60's and my single Alpine 10" sub. I actually had to turn down the gain for the sub and turned down the bass boost too. The Autotek amp and eq really brought the Kickers to life, my old amp was sounding very muddy and distorted, this new amp has a super clean sound yet is very loud if I want it.

This is a lot better and the 7007 made my system sound 100 times better than my other equalizer. It is clean and bright now, not harsh and screeching like before. The 7007 is a great little equalizer snd it steps up the preamp voltage so I get the best sound out of my amp.

Here is a shot of my new amp. This amp absolutely rocks! I also have no more odd thumping noise or noise in my sub when my blower fan is on, either. My old amp or eq, maybe both had recently developed some odd noise problems. The amp was nearly 10 years old though, so I guess its time had come. The Autotek amp has a cool blue light on it when it is on:

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I bought this 4 gauge wire kit for about $27.00 from Amazon. I did not use it though because even though the Sonic Electronix site and the manual for my amp say the amp takes 4 gauge wire, the connectors are only 8 gauge. I tested my system pretty hard this afternoon and had no trouble with using my existing 8 gauge power and ground wires, the amp barely got warm. Mine are 100% oxygen free copper anyway, which work better than the copper coated aluminum they sell nowadays, and they may be carrying close to the same current as CCA wire anyhow. But this was still a really nice wire kit, it is sold by KNU Konceptz on Amazon:



The improvement in sound is unbelievable. And I only paid $85.00 for the amp and $70.00 for the equalizer, both with free shipping.

Jimmy

Edit..I should not have posted those pics of my dash with the 7007 equalizer. I thought it looked OK on Saturday but driving to work today in the sun I got a much better look at the dash and it is just plain butt-ugly. I am almost ashamed to have done it that way and posted pics of it here. It does not look good at all and it is a little hard to turn the ***** with it sitting beack behind the dash, but the eq is about 1/8" too tall to come through the radio opening so it will not come through the dash any further and there is no way to raise it up any higher either. I am just going to move it under the dash below the climate control head or back to the glove box.

Jimmy

 

I don't like to just give up on a problem..I liked having my equalizer in the dash with the deck, but I did not like how it looked. So today I took it all back apart and re-mounted the deck and eq in the kit. I moved the eq forward about half an inch and tweaked the dash a bit to allow the whole assembly to fit the dash like it should. I filed some more of the kit to make it look cleaner too. This time it looks a lot better:

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I am happy with it now. The deck/eq looks a lot better now and the eq is much better this way than it would have been back in the glove box and I really did not want it under the dash where I would smack it with my gear shifter all the time. I need the eq where I can access it while driving because I sometimes change the sound controls on it depending on the song or album I am listening to.

So I will say yes it is possible to mount a half-din eq and deck together in the dash of a 2001 Dakota. In my case it just took a lot of patience and time to get it to look right. That, and the pretty much total sacrifice of a Metra 99-6505 installation kit....

Jimmy

 

how do you like your kenwood deck? it looks to be the same one I got. Ive got some kicker ds6.5s in the front door and sonys in the rear. plan to upgrade to higher kicker components in the front and a small 4 channel too.

 

It's a KDC-X395 Kenwood Excelon deck and it does a good job, is very easy to operate while driving. I wish it had a rear USB port but other than that it has been a good deck. It controls my Ipod which is what I listen to 95% of the time and it charges the Ipod too. When I got it I found that the volume **** was a bit slippery but I put a rubber band on it and took care of that problem.

Jimmy

 

yea, I didnt like mine at first, it didnt seem like it got loud enough but after adjusting the settings I love it.

 

I used to have the best of the best car audio equipment in my cars/trucks but after having three expensive systems stolen. I said to hell with it got a $50 radio and was happy as all could be. Finally in 2008 got a $100 Pionner MP3 CD player am/fm that’s been great the last 6 years playing my custom made MP3 CD’s never used the radio no commercials no DJ talk talk just music. When you can put I’m not sure 50 to 60 tunes on one CD I never tire of the same two CD’s that I have better than any radio out there at a very cheap price. Nice speakers help but not needed as road noise and engine noise washes out most quality sound anyway. I'm only in my Truck maybe 15 minutes a day at that.