I haven't had much experience with Clarion but I can't imagine it being much better sounding than a Eclipse. I'm a big Alpine fan and it's what I run in my truck but Eclipse also makes super nice H/U's. Alpine or Eclipse are probably the two brands I'd consider most. I'm a big Alpine fan. I also have a 4 channel Alpine amp in my truck and I like it a lot too.

 

I plan to go Alpine when I get the money, if you don't want to spend as much I'd take a look at JVC's Arsenal line. I've had very good experiences with them in the past, in fact the KD-SH9750 I put in my Chevy 5 years ago is still going strong in my dad's Ram now. Gotta say I'm not a big fan of Pioneer, my friend has gone through 2 of them in 3 years, he's on his third right now and said if it breaks too he's never buying from them again.

Eric how would you compare Clarion against Alpine out of curiosity?

 

I have had good luck with Alpine the little that I have been around them. As far as Eclipse, Eclipse has great H/Us and Cd Changers. I have had my h/u for 6 yrs paired up with a changer. Its staying together good and puts out aclear sound with great bass.

 

I agree. I put a JVC Aresonal in our older Honda quite a few years back I don't know if it was quite 5 but it may have been. It was quite a few and it still works. I liked it a lot and it seemed to have really good sq for a H/U. Just super nice overall. I haven't heard all that great of things about the regular JVC line but have heard a lot of good about the Aresonal line.

Anyway mine did/does have 2 issues. The first one being for some reason it would skip when the 2 12"s hit hard. I guess from the vibration. I tried mounting it down tighter but never could get it to fully stop not sure if it was just my h/u or what. Not a big deal and works great with the 10" sub in there now. The 2 12"s I'm sure were hard on everything. The other one is when you push the forward button to skip forward a track it sometimes wants to go back. The fix for this seems to be if you push that side of the faceplate in while pushing the button it seems to work. Not a big deal but this started happening after a couple of years. Then one last thing it seems to skip sometimes now from just normal stuff but I think it's because I had saw dust get all over the inside of the car and I'm thinking some might have gotten in there. I'm not sure though. Overall it still works well. It didn't hardly skip at all when I got it infact seemed better than the Alpine in the old truck we had skip wise. I didn't notice a problem until the 2 12"s came into play then that saw dust incident but it was already several years old then. I'm thinking the skipping from the subs might have been I couldn't fully get the mounting bracket to tighten down. Not sure I just know my Alpine in my truck doesn't seem to skip with 2 12"s but I think it's just how the car was setup.

Overally I really liked and still do like that H/U. It was really nice and also had a aux input on the front. I'd say I liked it better than the Alpines at the time. I like my Alpine in my truck a little more but when new it also cost a lot more. Overall both are great h/u's.

As for Pioneer a guy I used to work with liked them. I really like Pioneer for home audio stuff and infact use some of it but I've never been a fan of their h/u's. The more expensive ones seem to do well but when I was looking for a cheap radio for the old truck the lower end ones seemed to sound muddy and horrible where as the lower end Alpine sounded great. Once you stepped up to the mid priced Pioneers they seemed to sound better and as good as the other choices. I just like the price on the Alpine and the sq of it.

I also have a set of 6.5" Pioneer speakers in the older Honda and they are okay but nothing to write home about. I've used Polks a few times now and Alpine speakers too and have liked all of them quite a bit more.

I'm personally a big fan of Polk Speakers. I had a set of 6x9 Momo's in the old truck. Sold them to a buddy and got most of my money back. I had them a year and lost like $5-10 on them and I bought them new but got a discount as a family member worked at a store that sold them. Then I have a set of 6.5" db components up front in my truck and coaxials in the rear and like them. I wanted the Momo's but the db's were border line being able to fit so the momo's were a no go. They said the db's wouldn't fit either but I got them to. I didn't know if I'd be able to get the momo's to work so I went with the db's. The guy I sold the momo's too seems to love them too. He has changed his whole stereo setup a few times and the Polks are the only thing he kept throughout it.

I've just never been a JL fan. Several friends have dumped tons of money into JL setups and honeslty I've spent a lot less on my Infinity subs and I've yet to hear a set of JL subs that impressed me or sounded better. My 10" Kicker Comp VR seemed to be better than my friends 2 JL 10" w3v2's or whatever. His sounded louder as they were two of them but no better imo. My 2 12" Infinitys to me hit harder and sounded better. His did sound slightly tighter but just not as good imo. Another buddy got a 10" JL I think W1 or W0 or something and it didn't impress me either. Sounded louder than my Kicker but I think thats how the amp was setup. Didn't sound that great to me. I've just heard several and only heard one setup that really impressed me. Most of them my setup has sounded better and cost a lot less. My buddy with the 2 10" W3's ended up getting Kicker Comp VR's later and then decided he liked them much better too. JL makes some decent stuff and I'm not saying they sound bad but imo others sound better if setup correctly and are usually a lot cheaper.

 

Yeah subs are tricky, depending on the box and even different models within the same brand sometimes. In my old teg I had Infinity Kappa 6 1/2's all around (component front coax rear) running off a 4ch Kenwood amp and a 10" Audiobahn Flame Q in a sealed box running off an Audiobahn mono amp all being fed from an Arsenal H/U (forget which one that was). Normally when I hear Audiobahn subs they sound pretty crappy but this one was pretty decent. Wasn't great but it was much better than I expect out of an Audiobahn, was loud as hell too. If I kept the car I was going to swap it out for either one or two 12" eD's.