New door speakers

[jaylee]

I wondered that about the door plastic.... Oh well, back to the drawing board.

I have never bust a speaker in my life... & i own a few..!

Reminds me of an incident years ago with an ex girlfriend.. Well she was currant at the time..

So we stop at a garage & i fill up.. I go to the kiosk to pay leaving the girlfriend in the passenger seat, come back to the vehicle, turn on the ignition to start the van only to find my wipers on full speed, the heater fans full & the stereo cranked full volume..! Funny enough it buggered one of the Vauxhall stock speakers fitted at the time..

She didn't last long after that.

[P-Med]

Right, so I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon, except I wanted components instead of coaxials, so I ordered JBL GT6-6C speakers. Hopefully I'll manage to get them installed tomorrow, and if so I'll do a little photo diary. They're only going to have to handle 80Hz and above, as I've already installed a 10" sub, so hopefully it's going to sound AWESOME!!!

[jaylee]

OK, so i went back to Halfords with the duff speaker & a print off e-receipt... The guy in my local didn't quibble on an exchange... However they don't stock the GTO's any more.. Discontinued line!?

So, i give what they had on show a bit of a bash.. & settled on some FLI component jobs.. Which apart form what they had as a demo was out of stock...

Now i actually can't fault the customer service from the stereo guy Jack... He "putered" & rang round a couple of other stores found one in stock shot off in his Golf & 15 minutes later i was sorted...

I still have the GTO's too..! Which is helpful because the diameter of the cone frame on the FLI's are a little bigger than the GTO's, though the depth is the same & those plastic rings with the lugs will be handy.. But i have a plan...! (I intend to make sure the cone gasket isn't obstructed from movement.)

[Dodgey]

Sounds like it'll work out! I found the Halfords lad to be very helpful. Especially when he charged me £14.99 for mine

Incidentally I've done some testing of my GTO's up front. The amount of bass from them is prodigious. Really impressive. Two catches though, one I expected, one I didn't.

1) My stereo power use has gone from 0.6 amps to 0.9-1.2 amps with the addition of the new front speakers. Expected.
2) The bass exists soly in the front. Go in the back and it is 100% gone! I expected some loss but not total loss. Must be the acoustics of the van. Not a problem as when I'm parked up camping I don't want to be using an amp of power anyhow, so I'll just fade the fronts out. I'm not 18 any more. Whilst I love my music, I don't like pissing off my camping neighbours

which reminds me of last year. I was at a festival , 10pm, Saturday night, playing some music, not particularly loud. A woman rocked up in a huge rental camper, tried parking for 10 mins, piled out with three screaming kids, looked at us and asked (quite aggressively), "is that music going to be on all night?!", "no, no!", I replied, "only half an hour or so, dont' worry". Then my girlfriend of the time chimed in, "are those kids going to scream all night?" :---p - she moved on.

[Simon Jones]

Check you haven't got the rear speakers out of phase with each other or the front pair (i.e. wrong polarity). It'll sound weird and all bass will get cancelled out.

[jaylee]

OK, those FLI's i got in exchange don't fit the front door... The depth is ok,but the cone cage bit is a little too big & the flange diameter (though the speaker is the same size) is a little too wide too...

So, i thought i'd put em in the back.... My dilemma is this....? the tweeter placement..?
I know they should be within about 9'' of the woofer..? & the FLI tweeters come with 3 different mounting choices.. Flush, straight up surface mount & this odd shaped one skulking at the bottom of the box..?

I found what looks like an ideal place, but what do the car audiophiles think?????

Its just roughly placed for now with the wire tucked at the back holding it up, before i commit...





The woofers cunningly placed so the gasket is free to move... I haven't put the panels back yet, still got some soldering for the wires & crossovers...

The original grill will cover it!





So what do you think of the tweeter placement....?

[P-Med]

Hi Jaylee,

I'm a recording engineer, not an audiophile (audiophiles spend too much on speaker cable and mostly don't understand audio!).

Most of your soundstage comes from the tweeters, so it's important to have them one of each side of you to get a decent stereo image. Also speakers are increasingly directional at high frequencies, so you want to have your tweeters pointing at your head so that you can hear the top end properly. You don't want them too far away from the mid-range drivers, but a car is not the most ideal audio environment, so a few extra inches between the two drivers is probably the least of your worries.

[P-Med]

Further to my previous post, I've installed the JBL GT6-6C components in the front with a fair bit of jiggery pokery involved, e.g soldering whilst lying on my back in the passenger footwell, and depositing half the skin off my hands from on all the sharp edges in the doors and under the dash, but hey! They fit! These are now complemented by an 'Infinity Basslink' subwoofer, which I can't recommend highly enough. Its got a 10" driver and a 10" passive radiator (like a port, but better), a built in 150 Watt D-class amplifier, and it's small enough to fit under the rock-and-roll bed. I've installed it under the bed at the back. I've high-pass filtered the JBL GT6-6Cs at 80Hz and low-pass filtered the sub at 80Hz, which means that the main cabin speakers can now go a lot louder without distorting as they don't have to handle any sub-bass.

[jaylee]

Hi P-Med thanks for yer comment.. Sound guy eh? Unsung heroes in my book.!

I was thinking that the tweeters directed from high would help stop the rear seats soak up the sound..? Though i fancy the stereo image from the rear speakers should sound better from the mid row seats...?

Vehicle acoustics can be odd... I'll set it up rough & see how it sounds..

I still need to find a replacement for the busted GTO in the front..

[P-Med]

I don't know where the rows of seats are relative to where you've put the tweeters, as I've got a side conversion. Ideally you'd have your tweeters in front of you - in a studio, speakers are usually arranged so that the listener and the two speakers make an equilateral triangle, and the tweeters would be at head height.

[winchman]

http://www.igmaynard.co.uk/bongo/forum/ ... 99#p545820
These fit perfectly as they are very shallow, I feel they sound excellent, difficult to get but soundmasterscotland have a pallet load as they are idea for cars with shallow doors like Bongos Subaroos etc
I am so impresed I bought a set for the back and a bigger 6.5" set for my Peugeot (ODC175)

[jaylee]

I don't know where the rows of seats are relative to where you've put the tweeters, as I've got a side conversion. Ideally you'd have your tweeters in front of you - in a studio, speakers are usually arranged so that the listener and the two speakers make an equilateral triangle, and the tweeters would be at head height.

I know what you mean..


That would be the problem.. The tweeters are loosely positioned at the back either side of the tailgate...



I could fit them flush as in square C..? http://lushprojects.com/bongopartsmk2/c ... mgno=.html

Which may sound better over all positioning wise, for when filtering to the back in camping mode...
(MPV bench seat set up.)

http://www.igmaynard.co.uk/bongo/forum/ ... 99#p545820
These fit perfectly as they are very shallow, I feel they sound excellent, difficult to get but soundmasterscotland have a pallet load as they are idea for cars with shallow doors like Bongos Subaroos etc
I am so impresed I bought a set for the back and a bigger 6.5" set for my Peugeot (ODC175)

Thanks for that idea Winchman... Worth looking into..!

[Dodgey]

Check you haven't got the rear speakers out of phase with each other or the front pair (i.e. wrong polarity). It'll sound weird and all bass will get cancelled out.

I thought that for a second but i metered all the wires during the install.

[jaylee]

OK, my saga is over..!

Had a bit of spare time this morning to finish everything off.. After experimenting with the tweeter placement for the rear component speakers the other night by trying them in the back above & either side of the tailgate, which surprisingly pushed the treble up front..



I then hung em in the vicinity of roof lining heater vents... http://lushprojects.com/bongopartsmk2/c ... mgno=.html To my ears there wasn't really a lot of difference if sat in the front, but a slight improvement as a passenger in the rear... So, with a personal preference for flush mounted tweeters, i measured several times, marked em up, before committing with a sharp Stanley blade cut the hole in the head lining a couple of mm's inside the mark for a tight fit of the pod... The head lining is made out of some sort of polystyrene type stuff covered in cloth & resin & there is quite a cavernous space behind it too...!

So, here we are...





The wiring comes out of the side of the headlining behind the trim over the door/or window & down where the seatbelts are fixed.. Again plenty of room..!

The original grill snapped back in place after a little fettling for the white logo'd bit on the speaker surround..




I bet you are wondering about my busted GTO in the front...?

I got really lucky on that one.. I managed to find someone who had a mangled box of em due to return as damaged stock while i was out getting shrinkwrap..
One speaker in the box was still intact... "Just give me yours in return", he said.. There are some absolute diamond geezers out there!!

I drove home feeling like i'd won the lottery..!

[blobber]

Looking good there Jaylee, just out of interest, did you have to run the wiring to the tweeters yourself? I have factory fitted tweeters there and thought maybe there was a loom already in place.