Im sure this question has been addressed a thousand times before but i couldnt find much about it while searching. My problem is that the person i bought the car from replaced the monsoon unit with a kenwood, which broke, so he replaced it with a standard stereo unit. it has the 7 band equalizer and cd player and to be honest it sounds pretty good for what it is. Im having difficulty tracking down a monsoon unit to fit that car and the ones that i find are kind of pricey. is there a big difference between the standard unit and the monsoon unit in a car that has the monsoon speakers? ive heard that it has a built in amplifier but ive also heard it doesnt sound any different than the standard. thanks

From my experience the speakers are all the same between the std or early 10 spkr systems and the Monsoon.
The head unit is the only difference and the only way to tell is the Monsoon ones say Ponyiac Monsoon above the LED panel.
Also and I'm not positive on this but I'm not sure if the Monsoon was available prior to 1997.

it has the w55 code and its got the 2 speakers in the hatch area and the 2 subs in the back seat. a friend of a friend has a 97 formula and his setup is totally different. it looks like he's only got a 6.5 in the door with no tweater but im not too sure. it definately doesnt have the pod for the tweater like mine does, nor does he have the two hatch speakers, so im assuming he's got the standard sound whereas ive got the monsoon, but im new to f bodies so i may be wrong.

The 10 speaker system was available all the way back to `93 My old `94 Formula had it aswell as my `98 the difference is the later model cars have the Monsoon head unit.

oh, so its not technically monsoon even though it has the 10 speaker system? i see now, ok, so there wouldnt be much of a difference by adding the monsoon unit then?

Personally, I'd replace it with a newer head unit. All head units have built in amplifiers, just the Monsoon is a little more powerful I'm sure. If you are worried about pushing out power, just get a 4 channel amplifier for the doors and hatch. The bass speakers should have enough power to make a decent bass line. I personally have a kenwood kv614. Or kvt...something like that. Check for power output on your head unit; rms, not max power.

I recommend a new one for the improved features like mp3 playback and iPod hook ups.