Car Stereos: Jetta monsoon speaker replacement, monsoon sound system, monsoon system

Question
Brian,
I own a 2002 4 door Jetta with a 4 inch deck and the monsoon sound system. As my car has aged so have my speakers and they really need to be replaced. I am willing to spend some money but I want to know what potential issues I should be concerned about as I have heard terrible things about trying to change these out.I especially have concern over this monsoon amp. Is there any way to get around it and just start over? If you could please just tell me my options I would really appreciate it. Thanks

Answer
Hi Sam,

The factory Monsoon amplifier doesn't really present much of a problem when you're replacing the speakers.  It's likely that the factory speakers are a 2-ohm design, while most after-market car speakers are 4-ohms; but that really won't cause any problems.  Any amplifier can handle an increased ohm load on the speaker outputs.  You don't really run into trouble until you decrease the load impedance.  It's true that the amplifier's output power will be reduced with higher-impedance speakers, but the difference isn't likely to be very noticeable.

The other issue with a Monsoon system is that there may be crossover filters built into the amplifier.  This means that if you replace your stock woofer with a full-range speaker, it will still only play bass if that's all it's getting from the amp.  If you're just trying to get rid of a crackling, defective factory speaker, then the lack of a full-range output probably won't bother you much either (given that the factory tweeters are still working).

The factory speaker design might cause some problems with after-market replacements, however.  The stock woofers are built into a 1" spacer assembly, which is riveted to the door.  It's not possible to remove the speaker from the spacer, and it's not possible to remove the assembly from the door metal without drilling out the rivets.  When installing the new speakers, you'll probably need to use your own 1" spacers.  I typically use a universal spacer, but there are Volkswagen-specific adapter brackets available as well.  

It is possible to bypass the Monsoon amplifier entirely, but I wouldn't try to do it using the stock head unit alone.  You can replace the factory head unit, or install an after-market 4-channel amplifier to drive the new speakers.  If you do this, you'll probably won't be able to retain the stock tweeters; you'll have to use full-range speakers in the woofer locations, or replace all the speakers with after-market component sets.

Hope this helps!

Brian