Kenwood Excelon components

cam5860

I just bought a new set of kenwood components. They are the 2001 model. I was wondering if anyone has ever heard this, and could tell me how they sound. I know the DB subs that they had back then sounded damn good.

MacLeod

Ive never heard these but Kenwood Excelon stuff is pretty solid stuff. I would be really suprised if they didnt sound pretty good.

cam5860

I also ordered the new kenwood excelon 4 channel amp KAC-X40 to push them. It's 70x4 RMS or 200x2 RMS.

exalted512

I hope those amps are better than the ones theyve been making the last couple years.
-Cody

cam5860

I saw where car audio mag reviewed last years model and spoke highly of it. So I thought they were clean amps. I decided to try one out since I love the sound quality of my kenwood excelon x791 headunit. Whats been wrong with them the pass few years? Let me guess they won't hold up long.

cam5860

The reason I went with the older model kenwood components is the new kenwood excelon components got a poor review from car audio mag. The overall score was like 51 compared to about 82 for the polk sr series.

exalted512

Well car audio magazine doesnt test them on a mass basis like an installer does. We had about 6 be bad OUT OF THE BOX. Ive never had that problem with another amp, ever.
-Cody

cam5860

Dang I see what your saying. They must not test them from factory before they ship them.

Also do you know much about the old excelon line? Them components I ordered are 2001 model ever heard them or installed any?

cam5860

Well I got a change in plans. Instead of getting the kenwoods. I decided to go with the new DB6501 component set and one DB104 subwoofer.

MikeC78

As I recall; back in the day, Kenwood amps were something to be had.(The shiznit):)

MacLeod

I dunno. I dont recall anything Kenwood being the ****. Alpine was always the brand to have with Pioneer a close second. Kenwood always had respect as solid gear but never the upper tier goods.

MikeC78

Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm just going by "word of mouth" back in the mid-90's when I was in HS.

MacLeod

They may have been the thing up in Illinois. I think it differs from town to town.

Down here back in the late 80's - early 90's Phoenix Gold was the most revered brand around. PPI wasnt that big here at all.

Jstas

Nah dude, Kenwood had the goods back in the late 80's and early 90's especially with their amps that advertised Tru-Wattage. No peak ratings just insane RMS ratings and they often produced more power than rated. On top of that, clean as a whistle. Their main competition at that time came from Sherwood which had some serious bruisers on the market, Hifonics which made dinky little amps with big power, Alpine and Soundstream. Different era dude. I'm glad to see Hifonics and Soundstream back in the game and in a big way. Alpine never left, neither did Kenwood but unfortunatly, Sherwood is just a shell of what it used to be.

But I remember way back when, if you had Soundstream amps and subs with Kenwood sources, you had a bangin' system! Then again, there were lots of power combos, most had Kenwood or Sony Mobile ES as source units. There was plenty of Pioneer Premier too. Speakers were pretty much anything from JBL, Infinity, Soundstream, Kenwood, Pioneer (IMPP was a BIG deal back then), MTX and Kicker. The big deals in subs were Kicker (known as Stillwater Kicker at the time), MTX, Soundstream, Cerwin Vega, Earthquake, Pyle and JBL's GT Series as the under-dog. Lots of potent combos, most using Soundstream, MTX or Hifonics amps. The big dollar systems had Sherwood and Kenwood amps and most everybody had Kenwood, Sony, Pioneer or Denon sources. Blaupunkt was a big deal too for amps and head units. RF was an also ran and Polk Audio was just starting to make waves in the SQ realm with the Mobile Monitor series. Alot of guys at the competitions were running Sony or Kenwood sources with big power from MTX, Soundstream or Hifonics and Kicker, Earthquake or MTX subs. I was running Hifonics power with Sony sources and JBL subs in ported boxes. We cleaned up at a bunch of local events and got pretty high scores at the big events in Philly and AC. Later I went with Kenwood sources and amps with Polk speakers all around and got high marks on that in my Ranger. Nothing really big and boomy but then the scene started dying off around here. I don't see much going on local. There are the big IASCA events in Philly but they aren't anything special compared to what happens down south or in the mid-west and Cali. You want sound competitions anymore, you gotta go deal with the posers at NOPI and such.



But as far as Kenwood, you gotta remember, they are one of the biggest audio companies out there. They will produce in one month what a lot of smaller companies produce in one year. If they produce 100,000 units a year and joe blow audio produces 10,000 units a year and they both have 10% error rate, that means that Joe Blow puts out 1,000 bad units in a year. But Kenwood puts out 10,000 units in a year. Statistically, your chance of getting a dud Kenwood amp are better than getting a dud Joe Blow amp. While it is something to consider, it shouldn't necessarily turn you off completely. I've asked around to alot of guys in the area and while I'm not trying to discount Cody's experience, it seems that very few (about 2 shops) in the area have seen similar results. One shop is an authorized Kenwood repair facility and they move Kenwood gear like it's going out of style. They have had two amps be bad out of the box and sold well over 1,000 units. So one guy's bad experience should be taken in to account but it shouldn't be held as indicative of an entire production run. Maybe Cody's shop just got a bad string from a run done at 4:45 on a Friday in the middle of July when there was a fishing trip planned? Dunno. Could be anything.

Jstas

MacLeod wrote: »

They may have been the thing up in Illinois. I think it differs from town to town.

Down here back in the late 80's - early 90's Phoenix Gold was the most revered brand around. PPI wasnt that big here at all.

Yeah, Phoenix Gold got big here after Sherwood folded and Soundstream ran into financial problems. For a while it was PG, MTX and JBL shooting it out. PPI kinda replaced Sherwood as the "higher end" amp to compete with Kenwood's high dollar stuff and Pioneer's Premier stuff. Denon got real big around here then too. But we started getting a ton of Denon stuff that was only available in Japan at the time. Nakamichi was a big deal around that time too and a bunch of people were spending way too much money on that junk. Denon, Nakamichi and Alpine had deals going on that if you bought their gear and it wasn't installed by an authorized dealer, they voided your warranty. That really started to hurt sales especially when Kenwood, Sony and Pioneer were kicking Alpine's **** in both quality and price/value and you could install it yourself. The only place I knew of where you could get Alpine gear and not void a warranty by installing it yourself was Crutchfield but it was marked up pretty high and priced out of most people's range. It kinda turned alot of people I know off of Alpine for good. Alpine got a little too arrogant and the thing was was that they weren't really any better than the competition. In some cases, the competition even had them beat. Especially when in some cases you could get better stuff from Kenwood, Blaupunkt and Pioneer and they didn't have any stupid stipulations and they cost at least 100 beans less than comparable Alpine units.

eloplayspolo

mid 80s early 90s was all about Fujitsu 10 in cali, my dad sold a car to a sony VP and he asked them to put in a Fujitsu 10, lol my dad still thinks its the best because the SONY vp wanted it.

1996blackmax

I remember running Kenwood PS series amps back in the early 90's. Solid amps that put out clean power.


As far as reviews go.......it depends on how they are tested. Sometimes they are not tested in the manner in which the component were designed/made to be used.

MacLeod

Damn Id forgotten about Sherwood.

The first system I ever saw was my buddy's who had 2 MTX Road Thunder 10" sub boxes sitting in the back seat of his '71 Monte Carlo powered by a Sherwood 240. Coolest thing Id ever heard! Ah the simpler times. You didnt need staging, imaging, linearity or ambeince - you just needed it to be loud!