@jkphotoshoot, I agree that the speakers are only as good as their main signal, but the stock head unit provides a much cleaner signal than people think. Especially once you add in a quality amp. I am using the stock head, a kicker marine amp, and the DS line like yourself (except I got the component set for the front with the separate tweeters) and I am VERY please with it. It is a tremendous difference over fully stock. I have the levels set properly on the amp and the stock head provides a much cleaner signal than I was expecting, even at full volume. I'm sure of I turned the gain up on my amp I could get some clipping but then I would be seriously hurting my ears.

Is a new head unit nice? Yes! Very!
Is it necessary to get better sound than stock? Definitely not, in my opinion.

To the OP, it truly comes down to just how good you want it to be. I always saw it as "it's a Jeep and I usually have doors off and top down. No need for a Bose system" plus the stock head is a good bit more weather resistant than aftermarket heads (my jeep tends to get rained in often)

Let us know what route you go, and post plenty of pics! Love me some good Jeep Porn!!

 

OK, so before I put $80 hard earn money to a new pair of good speakers, I thought I should try stuff the box with polyfill first.
bought a pack of polyfill from walmart at <$4 and stuff them, a lot of them, into the subwoofer and soundbar spearkers' box. I used double tape to stick the layers of polyfill to the wall of the box. I still haven't figure out how to fill the front panel speark space with the polyfill, I mean I want to stick the polyfill to the back wall, and I am worried about the temperature there.

Now, I can tell you, the sound quality is now MUCH MUCH better, the base now is deep and solid and you can feel it fills up the whole space of your interior, say bye to the crappy sound like before.

I used to have a Volvo S80 with premiumn sound system and I would say the base is close to what I got from Volvo, the only problem is the volcal and tweet clarity, not comparable to the Volvo system. But that can only be addressed after upgrading to better spearkers. However, if you don't listen to news a lot, then, I would say this $4 solution is already a BIG improvement, especially for bass.

If you are tight on budget and don't have high expection on sound but do need a system that can pop out solid deep bass and quality pop music, then go with the $4 solution first, 1000% worth it.