speaker help

[Ameer Antar]

i'm pretty sure the 5k's used a special fit 4" spks in the front and 
special ones in the rear deck too. I couldn't find any spkrs that would fit 
the front, so I used 4" spks and sealed up the gaps w/ silicone. I think a 
5" will fit in there, but you'd have to trim the speaker plate.

Anyways, all I run is the 4" Boston Acoustics up front. These are the 
components, not the coaxial type. I took out the rear speakers, and put a 
12" sub and box I built in high school in the trunk. The sound is great, 
and even in the rear, you can hear the music clearly cuz I mounted the 
tweets pretty high. I figured I could use holes for the original rear 
speakers to get sound from the trunk into the cabin. Everything sounds 
great and I ran the speakers and the sub off the head unit! I bought one of 
those Pioneer head units that has MOSFET45 which allows you to use the 
right rear spkr output as a sub out, and has much better sound quality due 
to the higher voltages available using MOSFET's. My system won't win any 
showdowns, but sounds very powerful from inside the car. I plan later to 
amp the fronts and rear sub...nothing crazy...maybe 30W up front and 100W 
in back. This just to relieve the load off the head unit [and wiring], and 
for even cleaner sound.

I really recommend components...coax speakers are a joke in my opinion. If 
you think about what speakers are actually supposed to do, you realize the 
problem w/ coaxials. The tweeter is mounted in the center of the woofer, so 
there's a hole in the woofer cone where the dust cap would usually be. I've 
seen gaps around this hole of 1/8" or more. The woofer is s'posed to push 
lots of air to make low freq. sounds. Air moves, as most things, in the 
path of least resistance, so it's much easier for a bit of this air to slip 
between this gap, than get pushed out by the woofer cone. So the woofer 
will be pounding back and forth, but quite a bit of air won't be moving or 
won't be moving appropriately. That makes very poor efficiency...low volume 
from high power consumption. A component system has separate tweets and 
woofers, so nothing has holes in it. It's pretty expensive, but IMO, 
anything else is a waste. I paid ~$180 for the Boston Acoustics, but there 
is cheaper. You can even build your own if your looking for cheaper 
options. A lot of car co's sell individual drivers and there are much 
better/cheaper ones at speaker distributors like zalytron, parts express, 
etc. You need to make a crossover, but parts are cheap and you can design 
one w/ free software. good luck.

-ameer

At 12:14 AM 2/22/2001 , you wrote:
>Hey all.. I've decided to go ahead and upgrade the audio on my 86 5ks.. As
>explained in a previous message it was bastardized some time ago.. so just
>pretend I am starting from scratch :>
>
>Firstly, I got the SONY CDX-1300 cd player/radio at circuitcity on
>closeout ($189 reduced to $84).
>
>I am going to just use 2 6x9 speakers in the rear and the two 3 1/2"ers in
>front.. I may fill the hole where the 10" subs used to be.. but not for a
>while.
>
>I am not planning to use an amp.
>
>Any recommendations on the 6x9 speakers?  Also, any recommendations on the
>3 1/2"ers?  The existing 3 1/2s are shot so I dont use them anyway.. I
>was thinking about some fullrange 3.5s..  Any experience with brands etc?
>
>Also, What sort of 6x9s should I be looking at if I am not planning on
>using an amp?  Thx!
>
>ps. As mentioned, I am looking for a 'good' sound system -- not one of
>those sound systems you can hear coming a mile away :) .. just something
>that doesnt buzz too much and can play music at normal levels without
>distorting it too badly.
>
>Thx!
>-Andrew Sitzer