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I have the Power Acoustik aftermarket head unit along with the ACC harness that allows me to use the Bose amp and it has it's own ACC power source. My question is about replacing the twiddlers. I'm not a huge audiophile, just want an improvement to sound over the 21 year old worn out speakers. From what I understand, a noticeable improvement can be made by replacing the 3.5" twiddlers in the front but leaving the OEM bass unit alone and replace the 6.5" twiddlers in the rear.
I saw that Metra makes an adapter so you can remove the entire front speaker unit, but I assume that is for people that are replacing everything and running an aftermarket amp/bass setup?
This is what I'm looking at and wondered if anyone has them installed. I've got the wire harness adapters on order .
Twiddler is the name used with the Bose 3.5 inch speakers in the front panel, since it is not a true tweeter but some sorry attempt to combine a tweeter and a mid range speaker. Not sure who started calling it that but there are a lot of threads on it in the audio section.
Too bad GM couldn’t have just put a great sound system in their flagship car at the beginning and too many have upgraded the system. Of course there are those of us who hardly ever turn the radio on since the Corvette provides its own fine sounds.
Twiddler is the name used with the Bose 3.5 inch speakers in the front panel, since it is not a true tweeter but some sorry attempt to combine a tweeter and a mid range speaker. Not sure who started calling it that but there are a lot of threads on it in the audio section.
Too bad GM couldn’t have just put a great sound system in their flagship car at the beginning and too many have upgraded the system. Of course there are those of us who hardly ever turn the radio on since the Corvette provides its own fine sounds.
GM didn't put a great sound system in their flagship car because said "flagship" was damn near eliminated from production. This is why so much of the C5 interior is of questionable quality. The car was almost axed!! They had to hurry up and design a lot of things on the fly to make it ready for the 1997 MY. I wonder how many people know that the later C5s nearly came an 8 speed automatic transmission? Yup, GM contracted with Gear Vendors to adapt their O.D./U.D. unit to the 4L60E. They even had the 8 speed auto badges made up. Someone high up in GM killed it at the last minute. The info is out there. President of Gear Vendors said he felt like he was riding on a dinosaurs tail, and when it changed direction he was thrown to the wayside. It appeared in a Motor Trend article in 2011. Interesting reading......
Last edited by grinder11; Feb 24, 2025 at 02:03 PM.
I saw that Metra makes an adapter so you can remove the entire front speaker unit, but I assume that is for people that are replacing everything and running an aftermarket amp/bass setup?
This is what I'm looking at and wondered if anyone has them installed. I've got the wire harness adapters on order .
Correct, those speaker plates are for an aftermarket overhaul.
I am looking at swapping out my OEM speakers for the same JBL's as you. Let me know if you are happy with them! I'm not going full audiophile in this car either; that's what home speakers are for! I just want something better than the Bose for Highway cruising.
I replaced the OEM speakers with those JBL's last year, and used that same wire harness adapter. Huge improvement in sound?....no. Noticeable.....yes, but not night and day different. Now if your OEM speakers are torn or separated causing buzzing, then sure, the JBLs will make a more noticeable difference.
The swap is pretty easy to do. Just have to be careful taking off the door panels. Probably a good idea to get several new fastners as you will break one of them, at least.!
Also, if you do a search on here, you will read that the OEM speaker terminals have the (+) and (-) terminals reversed as far as size. So to get the wire harness adapters to work, you will need to remove the terminals from the connector and swap them around, or cut the speakers slide-on terminals off, put new ones on, or live with the polarity swapped.
The front speakers have the same problem. I just removed the terminals from the connector bodies and swapped the pins around.