Where should I put my speakers?

[newregal]

My regal is an '85 and I see no room in my door to put my tweets or my 5 1/4" mids; any ideas? My door does not have factory speaker holes. I think the only speakers are in the front on top of the dash. Suggestions folks?

 

[SilverSleeper]

Q forms kick panels.
They are some great pieces. I have had mine for a few years now and love em. They replace your factory kick panels, and allow you to mount a 5.25" and tweeter where the imaging and staging will sound best.
The only downside is that you have to move your computer somewhere else. The new panel requires you to move it. I mounted mine in the plastic box provided for it in the kit, and it fits under the carpet up near the glovebox.
Other than having someone make you custom doorpanels, or doing some really fancy custom work, the Q-forms seem like a good choice.
Audiowizard makes some really nice doorpanels for our cars if you want to think about that route.
The dash speakers are only 3.5". You might have 4x10"s in the rear in addition to those.The only cars that had 5.25"s in the door had the factory concert sound option, which seems to be quite rare. They had provisions in the door, and a different lower door panel to make use of it.

 

[Audiowizard]

Originally posted by SilverSleeper
Audiowizard makes some really nice doorpanels for our cars if you want to think about that route.

Thank you for the plug Jason! Here is a sample of the door pods that I custom build to order:

Custom Built Doorpods

 

[John Larkin]

Here's my favorite quote from one of his admirers in the guestbook:

mikesmontess: I love your suttle custom Hey, as long as they've got money, right Eddie?

 

[Audiowizard]

Originally posted by John Larkin
Here's my favorite quote from one of his admirers in the guestbook:

mikesmontess: I love your suttle custom Hey, as long as they've got money, right Eddie?

Thats the only way I can do business! I always give them their moneys worth when I do a job .

 

[John Larkin]

Eddie, here's a sincere question. I am thinking of upgrading my speakers and possibly adding an amp with line-level converters off the stock head unit. In the doors I have Concert Sound. I would like to add a tweeter though and just use a single 5.25 in the Concert Sound grille. In my old Elco, I had the tweeters in the dash vents on either side and it was always too shrill. I hear that for proper imaging, the tweeter should be close to the woofer. Would I be ok imaging-wise by adding a tweeter behind the Concert Sound panel (on the lower panel)? I'm thinking a simple surface mounted one would suffice, maybe mounted in a piece of PVC pipe covered with material. I would use some sort of capicitor/resistor to create the crossovers.

 

[SilverSleeper]

Ideally, for the best imaging...

You would want all your speakers as close together as possible. Also, you want the pathlengths from either side as equal as possible ( to both driver and passenger).
One thing you could try ( I have never seen a CSII setup, so I am not sure if it would work), is to build a thin "bridge" for the tweeter over the 5.25" driver in the door. This seems to work well in door mounted applications. If you make it out of a mildly thin metal, and dampen it, you could bend it to get the imaging where you would want it. But, this is all assuming there is room enough to do that behind a CSII panel.
Also, it depends on the tweeter material for the way it sounds. Cheaper tweeters tend to be more "abrasive" sounding, than silk dome ones, which are more expensive.

 

[GNandTTA]

Plus whatever tweeter you buy, make sure it has high (good) off-axis response. Most good tweeter manufactures list this spec. Because of the low mounting position, most of the tweeters sound will be blasting into your legs, hardly good imaging. However, if it has good off axis response more of the sound will disperase and make it up to your head. I believe MB Quarts tweets have a very good OA resonse. Otherwise, try to angle them up as high as you can.

Think about it, at home are your speakers sideways facing your legs?

 

[mcss383]

The tweeters don't have to be right next to the woofer...just ask Scott Buwalda. If your x-over is 5k+ its actually better to have the tweets in the a-pillars and the mid range in the kicks. I followed his advice on this (JL XR's x-over at 6k) have my tweets in the a-pillars, mid in the kicks and woofer in the door....I now have a solid center image above eye level. Depending on song its usually right on the rear-view mirror, or slightly below (perfect for that 4th row height). To make the most of this setup you need a little time alignment for the tweeters to match the distance difference between the mid and tweet. But, I don't have time alignment (yet ) and it still sounds awesome.

Now if your component set x-over less than maybe 4.5k then put the tweet in the kicks. Around 5k+ you no longer have imaging cues by location, ie your soundstage isn't going to be constantly moving up and down depending on the vocal or instrument being played.

 

[Rayk]

John Larkin, I put a pair of Infinity Kappa Components in my Concert II location and mounted the tweeter to the side of the CII pod. Here's a picture of the install:

http://community.webshots.com/scripts/editPhotos.fcgi?action=viewall&albumID=50455320

The tweeters are located just right for good sound presence as I can see both tweets from the driver's seat. The mounting pods for the tweets came in black but I painted them gray to match my interior. Works for me.

 

[John Larkin]

Looks like it's going to rain tomorrow; I may piddle with this. I have some old horn tweeters from some weird speaker array I inherited a long time ago that I cannibalized for the parts (they were like globes, very 70's). I'll probably cut the horn off and and just expose the opening of the dome. Then I can play with some inductor and capacitor values. Initially I'm thinking of using a 4K high pass capacitor on the tweeter and probably a 200 high pass capacitor on the CSII door speaker. Looks like the factory speakers are 10ohm? If so, can I use 8ohm capcitors and get reasonably close levels with my capacitor choice?

 

[Rayk]

John, I've got my original CII door speakers and they are definitely 4 Ohm. So are the dash speakers. If you want to play with crossover values here's a link with a calculator that makes it easy. Take care,

http://www.the12volt.com/caraudio/crosscalc.asp

 

[John Larkin]

Thanks Ray. I have a link that I found and saved as well. Handy stuff for the tinkerer. I'm happy to hear the speakers are 4 ohm. That will help immensely since I'm going to use a 30W 4 channel amp I already own; I don't need a loud system and underworking the amp is a bonus.

 

[Rayk]

John, Your 30 watt should do fine for the stock radio/speaker setup. Does the amp have speaker level inputs? IF so, you can do without the speaker to line converters. Most converters are of questionable quality and running speaker levels to your amp is usually preferable.

Just a thought for you to consider. If you're still running the stock radio they tend to lose a lot of sound fidelity when they're this old. If you're sensitive to good sound, even at medium to low levels, it might be a good time to upgrade to a more modern head unit. The difference could be dramitic.