- First Name
- Peter
- Joined
- Apr 24, 2022
- Threads
- 7
- Messages
- 76
- Reaction score
- 108
- Location
- Victoria, BC
- Vehicle(s)
- '93 Range Rover Classic
- Your Bronco Model
- Badlands
- Thread starter
- #1
Just finished phase 1 of my sound system install.
Full disclosure: I've never installed a sound system in a car before but was really shooting for that bang for your buck sweet spot.
Now, depending on how folks respond, if someone else is trying to install components in place of the kick and dash speakers, this may be just the info you need... or it may end up a cautionary tale and I'll have to redo it all. TBD.
My main bottleneck was trying to figure out if I would need to run new wiring to my tweeters from the kick panel or if there was a way I could use the factory wiring without needing to tear everything apart. Turns out, it was pretty easy, but I could not find this information for the life of me. I ultimately took an educated guess after matching the wire color from the dash speakers with the ones in the kick panel harness and straight-up crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.
Here's where I landed:
- The good ol' Kicker Key 200.4 - Pretty self-explanatory. A popular choice, the PnP harness makes the whole thing super easy, and installing it under the steering column is a perfect fit. It's also super easily accessible if/when I need to tinker (or show off the DSP on/off).
- Polk db402 4" for the rear - Nothing special here. They're well-reviewed, inexpensive, and rated to get wet. The rear is mostly for the passenger's benefit and serves as some light fill.
- JL C2650 - These guys are the star of the show. The 6.5" fits nicely in the kick panel, and it's easy enough to find the passive crossovers a home nearby. Their main shortcoming seems to be in the bass department but that's gonna be the sub's job anyway.
- The tweeters from the c2s replaced the 4" dash speakers. It seemed really counter-intuitive to me to replace 4" speakers with tweeters, but some positive reviews on here and a rep from Crutchfield swearing that it'd be the best use of the 50W per channel convinced me to give it a shot.
I was a bit intimidated about wiring them, but ultimately I took a 72-5602 wiring harness and plugged the + and - into the passive crossover. Then I clipped the wires that looped between the + and - out and the tweeter. I plugged the tweeter inputs on the harness straight into the tweeter out of the crossover. Lastly, I took some leftover speaker wire and connected the 6.5 speakers to the crossover separately.
Barely had to mess around with wires at all. Used the factory dash wiring without issue. Ran the DSP and it sounds great. I'm no audiophile but did get a friend to bring over his sound spectrum analyzer and it all looks and sounds great with a gentle curve down into the 20khz range.
I did need to set the tweeters to -3db in the crossover to compensate for how far apart the tweeters and kick panel speakers were. It was quite bright in the "reference" setting.
Also bought all my foam speaker rings, tweeter 4" spacers, and cheap sound deadening from aliexpress. It all worked as intended. Is it as good as name-brand stuff? Probably not but I can't tell the difference and it cost like 40$ total.
All in, I spent (in monopoly money, CAD)
100$ on the polks
375$ for the Key 200.4
333$ on the JL C2s
40$ on bits in pieces from AliExpress
300$ on the PnP harness (with key 500.1 wiring)
So ~$1148 CAD, tax in.
Next step is I'm gonna try n build a sub-box to fit in the rear quarter panel and pair that with my Key 500.1. Hoping to squeeze a L7T 10" in there if I can get enough volume. If not, 8" will more than suffice. I suspect I'll have the sub all dialed in for <1000$.
It's not gonna win any awards, but for a grand, it sounds as good as I could hope to perceive and is already a thousand times better than stock. If I was doing it again, I'd probably pursue bi-amping the components and just leaving the rears on their own channel. I still may eventually but it seems more complicated and my PnP harness didn't come with any wiring diagrams, so I'd have to do some more digging.
Full disclosure: I've never installed a sound system in a car before but was really shooting for that bang for your buck sweet spot.
Now, depending on how folks respond, if someone else is trying to install components in place of the kick and dash speakers, this may be just the info you need... or it may end up a cautionary tale and I'll have to redo it all. TBD.
My main bottleneck was trying to figure out if I would need to run new wiring to my tweeters from the kick panel or if there was a way I could use the factory wiring without needing to tear everything apart. Turns out, it was pretty easy, but I could not find this information for the life of me. I ultimately took an educated guess after matching the wire color from the dash speakers with the ones in the kick panel harness and straight-up crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.
Here's where I landed:
- The good ol' Kicker Key 200.4 - Pretty self-explanatory. A popular choice, the PnP harness makes the whole thing super easy, and installing it under the steering column is a perfect fit. It's also super easily accessible if/when I need to tinker (or show off the DSP on/off).
- Polk db402 4" for the rear - Nothing special here. They're well-reviewed, inexpensive, and rated to get wet. The rear is mostly for the passenger's benefit and serves as some light fill.
- JL C2650 - These guys are the star of the show. The 6.5" fits nicely in the kick panel, and it's easy enough to find the passive crossovers a home nearby. Their main shortcoming seems to be in the bass department but that's gonna be the sub's job anyway.
- The tweeters from the c2s replaced the 4" dash speakers. It seemed really counter-intuitive to me to replace 4" speakers with tweeters, but some positive reviews on here and a rep from Crutchfield swearing that it'd be the best use of the 50W per channel convinced me to give it a shot.
I was a bit intimidated about wiring them, but ultimately I took a 72-5602 wiring harness and plugged the + and - into the passive crossover. Then I clipped the wires that looped between the + and - out and the tweeter. I plugged the tweeter inputs on the harness straight into the tweeter out of the crossover. Lastly, I took some leftover speaker wire and connected the 6.5 speakers to the crossover separately.
Barely had to mess around with wires at all. Used the factory dash wiring without issue. Ran the DSP and it sounds great. I'm no audiophile but did get a friend to bring over his sound spectrum analyzer and it all looks and sounds great with a gentle curve down into the 20khz range.
I did need to set the tweeters to -3db in the crossover to compensate for how far apart the tweeters and kick panel speakers were. It was quite bright in the "reference" setting.
Also bought all my foam speaker rings, tweeter 4" spacers, and cheap sound deadening from aliexpress. It all worked as intended. Is it as good as name-brand stuff? Probably not but I can't tell the difference and it cost like 40$ total.
All in, I spent (in monopoly money, CAD)
100$ on the polks
375$ for the Key 200.4
333$ on the JL C2s
40$ on bits in pieces from AliExpress
300$ on the PnP harness (with key 500.1 wiring)
So ~$1148 CAD, tax in.
Next step is I'm gonna try n build a sub-box to fit in the rear quarter panel and pair that with my Key 500.1. Hoping to squeeze a L7T 10" in there if I can get enough volume. If not, 8" will more than suffice. I suspect I'll have the sub all dialed in for <1000$.
It's not gonna win any awards, but for a grand, it sounds as good as I could hope to perceive and is already a thousand times better than stock. If I was doing it again, I'd probably pursue bi-amping the components and just leaving the rears on their own channel. I still may eventually but it seems more complicated and my PnP harness didn't come with any wiring diagrams, so I'd have to do some more digging.
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