How I upgraded factory speakers on a $200 budget

[996garage]

As we know, the sound system in the BRZ/FRS is pretty lack luster with no bass and weak highs. I listened to the OEMAudio system in person, and it was very very nice, but I didn't want to shell out $1K for decent sound. In fact, I really wanted to spend less than $200 for everything. Therefore I'm going to document how I upgraded my speakers on the cheap. None of these steps were very difficult, so hopefully the wiring info and my story will help some of you guys looking to do the same thing.

I am not an audio professional, but my friends guiding me on this project are dedicated car audio professionals.

Front Dash 1" Tweeters:
I unplugged the stock tweeters and used some spare Clarion dome tweeters that I had left over from a component speaker set I had used in a previous car. (you can pick up a new pair for less than $40 bucks) I simply used silicone to mount the aftermarket 1" dome tweeters directly into the stock location of the speaker cover. You won't see any of the silicone under the speaker cover, and they are not going to move or fall out.



The only complicated part of doing this was figuring out the wiring. As you can see from the photos, the stock speaker connectors have 4 wires each. After some trial and error, I cut off the stock connectors and did the following to connect up the aftermarket Clarion tweeters wires:




Driver side:
Connect red wire & pink wire to positive wire of new tweeter
Connect white wire & purple wire to negative wire of new tweeter

Passenger side:
Connect yellow wire & white/blue wire to positive wire of new tweeter
Connect black wire & black/blue wire to negative wire of new tweeter

I wired in bass blockers to eliminate any lows being sent to the tweeters, similar to these items:
http://www.crutchfield.com/p_127BB30...f.html?tp=3216



After listening to the tweeters for a few weeks, I found the highs were a little too sharp, so I wired up an in-line high pass 10ohm 10% resistors on the positive lead (before the bass blockers) that reduced the brightness of the tweeters.



Normally I would splice and solder the 3-way join of the wires, but there was so little space under the windshield to work with, I just went the easier route and used a small bullet cap to join all 3 wires together. Then I electrical taped the cap to the wires and put on a couple small zipties over it to prevent the electrical tape from coming loose. After doing this 4 times, the result was very dramatic where the highs are much more powerful than the almost non-existent highs from the oem system.

The 3" speaker next to the tweeters seemed to be decent quality, so I did not feel the need to replace them right now.

6 1/2" Door Speakers:
The stock speakers are 2ohm, but the selection of 2ohm 6.5" speakers was pretty weak. Instead I went with a nicer Clarion 6.5" coaxial speaker (SRG1623R) which was 4ohm, so the volume level might be a tad bit lower vs a 2ohm, but I'd rather have the better sound quality over the louder volume.

Only difficulty with these speakers is that you need to have some brackets fabricated to mount properly. I know there's a vendor in one of the threads that sells them for $30 a pair, but I had my friend (who's a car audio professional) fabricate a pair on his CNC machine for me.(I think he may decide to sell them later on, so I'll let you know if he does)

You also have to buy a pair of these speaker harnesses along with a pair of water resistant foam baffles:
http://www.crutchfield.com/p_1207103...s.html?tp=3097
http://www.crutchfield.com/p_237XT65...h.html?tp=2809

I also added a several squares of dynamat around and inside the door for sound deadening. Here are photos of the install:




After added the sound deadening to various locations on the door, I added the baffles and the mounting brackets. (drilled a hole through the bracket and the baffle to run the wire through the side)


installed speaker to bracket and trimmed the baffle material.

There are several threads on how to remove the doors, so I won't detail that up in this post. It's not very hard to remove the door cards. The new door speakers really improved the sound clarity and created a fuller sound with more bass in the entire cabin.

Bass powered sub-woofer in trunk:
Then I wanted to add a bit more bass, but nothing crazy over the top. (I have a 12" sub from my other car) I picked up a powered sub-woofer box like this one: http://www.kicker.com/Hideaway
(I got a good deal on my friend's barely used one for $100) I thought about buying the oem Subaru sub which is also made by Kicker, but it doesn't have any bass level adjustment, and it also eats up more valuable trunk space.



The kicker hideaway sub comes with all the necessary wires, has bass adjustments, is low profile, and can be easily removed by unclipping one wire harness and pulling two velcro straps. I ran the power wire through the firewall hole directly behind the battery down the passenger side of the car.(need to remove the battery which was easy) Then I followed the information in this thread to tap all of the factory speaker signals & remote signal from the stock amp: http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=42239

White = LF Speaker amplified out (black line means -) [PIN 1 and 5]
Grey = RF Speaker amplified out (black line means -) [ PIN 2 and 6]
Blue = remote turn on [PIN 8]
Green = Left speaker signal input from HU [PIN 3 and 9]
Purple = Right Speaker signal in from HU [PIN 4 and 10]


Using these Posi-tap products makes it so much easier due to the tight space splicing into the oem amp: http://www.crutchfield.com/p_669PP641/Posi-Products-Wire-Connectors.html?tp=2610
(there are a couple factory ground points you can use in the passenger rear of the car, or in the bottom center rear of the car)

For now I'm all done with my speaker upgrades, since there's no need to upgrade the rear speakers which are just for filler. Although it's not a high end sound system setup, these few DIY speaker upgrades make the audio sound waaaay better than stock, and only cost me around $200 bucks.

[996garage]

per request I added more photos and details...

[bababooey]

I may follow a similar path. I hadn't realized companies had brought compact powered sub's to market. The doors and that unit should level out those thuds in the bass. Seems a no fuss sorta upgrade. Thx