I have always been a Pioneer fan myself but I find the Kenwood to be pretty feature rich for the price. For $130 it has good power, good output voltages, lots of crossover options and accepts aux/ipod and usb on the faceplate - which can be nice. The interface/menus are pretty damn annoying, I'm not going to lie, and the instruction manual gives no real instruction. Thankfully I have done quite a few installs over the years and am pretty used to various menu styles, but the Kenwood is not very intuitive...For this build I wanted to keep costs as low as possible and for the money, the Kenwood is hard to beat for the price. I would go with a Pioneer 610/710bt, and spend a bit more if I was to do it again, as I love their menus and ergonomics much more...
Here are the specs of the setup in my c10:
Kenwood x493 - $130
Polk db 5-1/4's in dash (x-over at 80hz) - $100
Polk MMC690 6x9's in doors - $110
Polk db 8" subs in .35cu boxes - $80
Wood/glue/screws/etc - $60
MB Quart DSC480 powering 6x9's(full range) and 8" subs(x-over at 120hz) - $120
4ga wiring kit and speaker wire - $40
eDead(and some leftover Dynamat) in doors(both sides) and floor - $50
So for about $700 and a couple weekends of work this truck rocks pretty damn hard, and frequency response is quite good. I am a true audiophile and am extremely picky about output and frequency response, but for the money spent, this is a really nice setup and I am quite happy with it. Coming from a guy that is used to listening to AV123 LS-6's(below) on a daily basis, let's just say I was delightfully surprised by the setup I created....
