The Long Term Audio OdysseySo I've had random posts about this, but since the pictures got eaten, I've decided to do a re-cap.
First, there was the tape-deck, and it was wonderful. I got a collection of tapes from a relative and spent almost a week driving around listening to Dire Straits.
Unfortunately, I was used to having my phone plugged into the head unit, and my phone has ... maybe a thousand songs? Possibly more. So we got to work!
The last thing I did for my old magna before I sold it was to take my CD player out and put the factory tape deck back in it. I've owned three cars, and this CD player has been in all of them. It used to have a CD in it for a while, the only reason I have this particular one is because it was the cheapest one in the shop with an AUX-in on the front. It's been a solid trooper.
Unfortunately for the speakers that were fitted to the car, the CD player when it first gets power sets it's EQ to have everying at 11, which is good when you know about it and turn the bass down and the bass extension off and the loudness off and the volume down. I did not do this, and the speakers that were in the car lasted approximately 4 beats of a dance track, and they were ex-speakers.
Well, technically they still worked, but as you can see in the above photo, there were holes where there should have been webbing. I think I lasted a month before I decided I could take no more and took myself and $150 to the local car audio shop and said "SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT!!!"
For some reason, I thought the existing speakers were 6.5" ... clearly, they were not.
I made the hole bigger, and screwed the speakers in, and they juuust fit.
The mesh hit the dash before the door was latched, initially I thought "I'll just leave the mesh off" ... then almost kicked my new speaker, so decided to cut the corner off the mesh. Now the speaker meshes on both sides have dirt as a permanent fixture, so in hind sight using the covers was a great idea.
I made a whole template and did careful measurements and all sorts of cool things. Then ended up cutting the mesh with chicken scissors because trying to do it gently wasn't working for me.
I made myself a weather shield to protect my new investment from the elements from fibre glass - templated from a Tupperware bowl, then cut in half, and held in with copious amounts of glue, and that was that for several months. Unfortunately for me and my new speakers, the speakers vibrated the glue to bits, then one week it rained a lot, the speakers got wet, and that was the end of them. Damn.
So I toddled myself back into the same shop where I bought the original speakers, got the run-around for a month and discovered the importer that had been bringing them in had been given the flick, and there was a new distributor and they were awaiting their first shipment. I got in touch with the new distributor and found that the price had gone up, but he was prepared to do me a deal if I bought two pairs! Well, I had been toying with the idea of parcel shelf speakers, and the "deal" put the speakers at the same cost as the previous shop was selling them (so I presume about cost price, not RRP) so I ordered a pair of coaxials and a pair of components.
Before the speakers arrived, and I got to work fixing my weather shields.
Fibreglassing the shield in place.
Speaker clearance. Yes, that's the old speaker, and yes I did accidentilly resin it in place.
I finished it off by supergluing some clear plastic to the bottom of the weather shield to give myself some more "drip clearance" - from above they're waterproof (I tested) from below - not so much, I'll keep my river crossings to a minimum.
I installed the components as they had slightly better frequency than the coaxials. I held the tweeter in place with double-sided tape, and discovered that at volume basically the whole door rattled. I decided I'd do something about it, and that was the speaker install done for about 12 months.
Since moving out of town, I've been doing more distance driving and less commuting / hooning, so the rattles have been getting to me because I've been using more and more volume. I may be going deaf. I'm probably going deaf.
But the main point is I've been looking at some of the Class-D MOSFET amps on the market, They're very compact and will get me 50W RMS instead of 14W RMS, which means less distortion and more "hiktik beats bruv!"
I tracked down some Nut-serts ($15 on ebay for alu ones in a bunch of different sizes) drilled some holes, and BOOM!
Actually holding the speaker panels in with something more substantial than the trim-clips made a *huge* difference to bass response. The speakers no longer rattle in the door either. The door itself .... ehh, not quite as good on that front. The bass guitar in Incubus' "Echo" makes the mirror on the driver's side door rattle on some notes. and not a polite
"rattle" but a full in-phase
"BVVVVVVVT!"And I still haven't installed the parcel shelf speakers.... I should probably do that before I get the amp.... maybe.
Or I may just leave it as-is now I've scored "free" bass from actually holding the speakers in place.
I'll decide in another 6 - 12 months
