Installed in a 2007 Vette with the base stereo.

- Pioneer AVIC-Z1 Navigation HU
- JL Audio e6450 6-channel amp (2 for rears, 2 for "subs" in doors, 2 for 3.5" in door)
- Boston Acoustic OR Eclipse 3.5"/5.25" stock replacements

Will worry about the woofers in the doors at a later date.

Have a friend who is an installer so he can do it fairly cheap (under $200).

What do you think?

 

Also, where are the options for mounting such an amp in a C6?

 

I will let other chime in with amp options as I dont know the market very well and there's folks here that likely can give you options that may very well be a better value than the JL.

My preference to doing a sub and a coaxial speaker in the doors would be to go with a 2 way or 3 way setup and then a sub in the back. You're going to be putting a nice head with a good amp in there, to tie those into coaxials seems something of a waste to me.

As far as mounting the amp goes, if you can spare the leg room some people have been glueing a piece of MDF to the wall behind the seat under the carpet and then attaching the amp to that. That would cost you nearly 4" of legroom though. Another option would be just behind the seats in the rear.

 

I'm more of a purist, so I don't want to add weight, and I also want to retain all my cargo space. I think some good 6.5's in the door should be fine someday for my bass needs. I'm not a big fan of exaggarrated bass. My home system is pretty high-end, I have a large subwoofer but its only use really is home theater. For music, I like a natural sound.

 

It would be nice if there was a 2-way or 3-way system for the doors that would install without a lot of surgery/custom mounts/etc.

 

All you would need to do is run new speaker wire and fabricate new baffles and you are set. No biggie at all, in fact, Pipedreams here on the forum sells the baffles....almost plug and play.

 

Are the baffles strictly for 6.5's or does he have them for other sizes as well?

Very cool, thanks.

 

I was thinking maybe a very shallow 8" sub in the doors along with 3.5" coaxials, but now I see that most 3.5" don't handle a whole lot of power. The JL amp is rated at 45WPC continuous, which is probably underrated, and I haven't seen a 3.5" that can handle more than 30WPC. Hmm.

 

I always take power ratings with something of a grain of salt. Most folks don't run at full power terribly often and the reality is if the power is CLEAN most drivers can handle far more than their ratings. The ratings are always very conservative for warranty purposes.

If you go with a coaxial and sub like that make sure the sub you use is capable of more than just thump so you can send midbass signals to it as well. You might be better off with a midbass as opposed to a sub. There is a large frequency gap between the 3.5 & the 8 and if your 8 isn't producing those midbass frequencies that gap will be audible.

There are a number of other options. You may want to consider an 8" 2 way where the crossover is designed with that sort of thing in mind. Or perhaps consider a 3 way where you can mount the midbass & tweet in the big opening with the midbass in the door panel. Then if you're still looking for deep bass you can do a sub (an 8 is only going to go so low anyway) in the back.

There are alot of options and what you're proposing will certainly work, but I'd be very concerned about that midbass hole.

I'm the guy that cuts the plates for Pipedreams so I'll address your q about them (thanks Nomad, I was trying not to sound too self-serving!)... There are 3 types of the plates available - 6.5", blank(so you can cut your own size) and custom. We will mix & match the door & trim panel pieces, cut vs blank and obviously custom you can have whatever you'd like. You can check them here:

http://www.nakidparts.com/id28.html

 

Like Komo said .. CLEAN power can be pushed through a speaker pretty safely over the speakers power ratings. Example a 1000w sub can push 1200 clean watts pretty safely with the proper crossover settings. A 1000w sub can get burned up from 300 distorted crap watts as well. \

The other thing to consider is that your speaker RARELY even sees your maximum wattage per channel. During most listening your speakers will likely see about 35-40% of your max wattage per channel. The maximum watts are only used during very large transitions in music or hard bass hits (when talking sub amps). Your sub amps will use a higher percentage of the available power far more often then your stereo amp channels will.

I like the recommendation of the 8" 2 way component system ... and you could get away with a 3 way system in the door if you mounted your tweets on the door panel or the A pillar without a ton of fabrication or custom work. Check out the DLS Iridium 6.3 3 way component system great sound for the money.

Fej

 

Fej, well put, but FYI - no door pull in a C6, we just have a button.

 

Cool thanks for the heads up .... kinda wish our C5 panel was more like yours. Edited accordingly

Fej

 

Does anyone make a reasonably affordable 8" 2-way? I can't seem to find one.

The DLS is a little more than I would like to spend.

 

Would you mind sharing your budget? That would help. For instance I see an 8" 2-way Dynaudio at woofersetc.com for $600 but I don't know what you're willing to spend on speakers.

 

Aye budget helps .. then if you know a little about speakers and what "sound" (flat vs say bright highs for example) you prefer them to have you could build yourself a nice little two way system using home drivers for as little as $200 and as much as say $500 with a little 12db rolloff passive crossover. Places like madisound.com or zalytron.com offer some great raw drivers for a very nice price. Just have to keep an eye on ohm rating as most home drivers are 8 ohms while car drivers are generally 4 ohms.

Fej

*edit BTW ding 1000 I feel cooler with 4 stars now *

 

I didn't intend on spending much more than $200-$250 on the fronts on eBay.

It would be nice to have 8's in the front, I'd like to have enough bass until I decide to add a subwoofer, if ever. I'm not a fan of exagerrated bass. Listen to mostly rock. I like 'musical' bass vs. 'booming' bass.

 

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showd...number=297-447

Good point about building the system. Above are the same drivers I have in my home speakers, which are Swan 6.1's. They sound really great. I couldn't expect the same sound, given they are in a tuned and rather large cabinet with 1" thick real rosewood, but still, they have proven to be great components.

Is the 3 7/8" mounting depth ok?

Some tweeters they sell also have some pretty hefty power ratings, 80WPC+RMS.

I could run the JL Audio 6 channel with 2 channels going to each 8" woofer, 2 channels to each tweeter, and 2 channels to some good 5.25" coaxs in the rear.

It would be equivalent to running a bi-wire setup in a home audio speaker, bypassing any kind of crossover. The midbass 8" drivers I'm looking at generally go up to 2,000Hz, whereas many tweeters start at 1,5000-2,000Hz

 

Isn't it better (safer) to go higher resistance than what is rated on the amp? The JL amp I have I'm sure will drive 8ohm woofers, although at a lower watt level. Should I be looking at exclusively 4ohm drivers?

 

Here's a good 4 ohm tweeter, but I think it might be too big to mount in the 3.5" stock location?

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showd...number=264-555

Also this:

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showd...number=267-153

 

You could probably get that Vifa to fit in the position by marking the hole pattern on it's faceplate and drilling for the screw holes. Vifa makes nice drivers for the money.

As far as the 4/8 ohm thing yes, it's "safer" to run a higher resistance driver on an amp than lower, but most car amps are optimized for 4 ohm drivers so you wouldn't be getting the best out of the amp. So can you do that, sure, is it the *best* thing to do, nope.