Hi Katie,

"...what would happen if I didn't replace the speaker(s) with Bose? The sound quality will be bad....or they'll go out again? Wouldn't the new speakers have their own amplifiers? (I'm just not getting this am I?)"

The deal with Delco/Bose car speaker systems in cars built when yours was is, their speakers have a very low resistance voice coil (usually one ohm). They could use a low power amplifier for each speaker and get the same sound levels that would require 4 times as much amplifier power with standard four ohm speakers, the common Resistance for car speakers then and now. If you were to replace your bad speaker with a speaker that doesn't have the same resistance, the sound output from that speaker would be different (much lower in this case) from every other speaker in the car. ...and most car speakers, particularly door speakers, don't have their own amplifiers as part of what you get when you buy the speaker.

Hope that helps explain it a little more, and I think I remember you paying about $180 for the replacement last time. ...way too much by about $150!

Bob (The speaker dude)