Gregerst

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Morel 3-ways. I'm looking forward to trying them out soon. 9" sub/mid bass will be going in the doors. They're less than 3" deep. Low fs, high efficiency. I was planning on giving them 200w each but I may up it to 300w or 400w ea. I'd like to cross them over in the 40-50Hz range and have the 15's take over from there. The mids and tweets will be getting 150w each. The subs are already getting plenty of power already for IB @ 350w each. I'm expecting this setup to get pretty loud and clean with some nice midbass "impact". But who know's maybe I'll end up swapping out the dome mids for some cones if I'm not happy with them.





But before I do any of that I'm going to try out these 3.5" Dynaudio mids for a little while. I picked them up cheap on ebay. They're out of a Volvo and are supposed to be similar, if not the identical, to the Esostar MD140/2. These will integrate with my current Dynaudio System 242, MW162 7" mids and MD102 tweeters. I just want to try out a 3-way Dynaudio setup before I cut my doors to fit the 9's. Should be fun!

05_NBP_TL

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Sub'd

pohljm

sounds great! dibs on the dyn's when you go 3 way!

niebur3

Those Dyn mids, from what I know, are the original MD140's. They have since come out with the MD140/2 and the current MD142. Still very nice though!

Gregerst

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I'll post updates as I make progress but with two boys, 1.5 and 3 yr olds, Daddy free time is more limited these days. lol. Still this is my new hobby and the wife respects that and lets me 'play with my toys'.
I've always been interested in doing custom fiberglass enclosures so I'm planning to teach myself so I can build some kicks for the mids or I may put them in the pillars. I'll have to see what sounds best. I'm also planning on building an amp rack or false floor and making my sub baffle look more professional possibly with fiberglass as well. This will be a summer long project for sure. It should be interesting.

I'll probably be looking to sell them in a month or so. They have honestly been the best sounding 2-ways I've ever owned, very detailed. If I had another vehicle that I could fit them in I'd probably want to hang on to them.

Yea I'm looking forward to trying them out and getting some tuning time with a 3-way setup.

I hate cars

Just don't treat them like a cone mid and try to cross them low. The 142s that I had did not like to go below 700hz/24db at moderate volumes. I ran mine 900-7khz and really liked them.

Gregerst

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Yea I believe the factory X 362 is at 900/3.5 so I'll be playing them somewhere around there. The morels crossover at 700/3.8

Gregerst

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So I did some work on the car over the weekend. There were a lot of things I wanted to get done. Installed new power wire for the amps, it replaced two 4 gauge power wires, installed a 3rd amp (190w x 2) for the mid woofers, ran another set of RCA cables and speaker wires for the new mid ranges. Cleaned up wiring for the 3Sixty, mounted the 3sixty controller in dash cubby hole, ran the USB cable from 3sixty up through the center console and finally temporarily mounted Dynaudio mid ranges so I could play with the dyn 3-ways before I replace them.

Stinger power cable with 300 amp fuse and distribution blocks. I love that the TL has enough room through the firewall and under trim pieces to fit this big 0 gauge wire.


I had the car torn apart from front to back. Rear seats removed, trunk liner pieces removed, front seats unbolted, center console and dash disassembled, etc.


Ran another set of RCA's from the 3sixty.3


3sixty controller installed in cubby hole.


Ran the USB cable from the 3sixty to the center console. This is a lot cleaner then having the cable stuffed under the front seat like I had been doing before. There's an additional 2 or 3 feet of cable in the bottom console enough for tuning while in the car. I use a 16 ft extension cable when doing RTA.


Dyn mids temporarily mounted in the kicks. Yep carpet needs cleaning asap lol. I'm going to run these for a couple weeks and spend some time tuning. Just from having them in so far with a basic tune it sounds very good, much more detailed and clearer mid range.

Gregerst

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Just a small update. While the wife has been down in sunny Florida most of this week with her GF's I've been stuck in snowy MN, working and taking care of the kids which means I've had even less free time. But that doesn't mean I haven't been productive. I managed to get a hold of some kick panels and a-pillars from a local guy for $50. Which is not bad considering that the stealership wants $250 for the same parts. I'll be using these for my install and saving my original pieces. I also picked up most of the material I'll to need to build the kicks.

niebur3

^^^That is a lot of stuff for just doing the kicks. Good luck though!

Gregerst

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lol yep probably enough resin and bondo to do 50 of them and those are the small cans. lol. but I do have plans for more fiberglassing. possibly a-pillars, amp rack etc. we'll see.

05_NBP_TL

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Nice update

Gregerst

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So I finished installing one of the 9's in the door tonight. It required a fair amount of work. Enlarged the speaker hole on the door, modified the window track and door panel, and reinforced the door with braces.
Even though I only have the one installed it sounds awesome. I can't wait to get the other side done.

Here's a pic of the 9 next to the Dyn that I replaced and the oem is there for reference. The other two speakers look puny next to the Morel. It has about 2x the surface area.


Aligning and test fitting behind the panel before cutting. I already cut the hole larger in order to fit the Dyn's but notice how much more metal needs to be removed for the Morel and you start to realize how much bigger these 9" woofers are.


Door cut and speaker fits.

I hate cars

Very nice! It was a very hard decision for me to go with the 9s. I had the Dyn Esotar2 650 and they did bass unlike any 6.5" I've ever heard but sometimes they just ran out of displacement. Part of the problem was the MS8 but I didn't know it at the time. Drums and other hard hitting stuff will come to life, music will sound more realistic. Being able to run them hard down to 55-63hz make bass up front retardedly easy and it's nice to make sure some of the deepest male vocals don't make it to the subs.

My advice is to feed them tons of power. I had 150w on each one and when trying to run them in the 50s and low 60hz range, I could hear some distortion. Hoping it was just the amp I added a second and ran 300w to each one and the distortion was gone and they sounded even more life like. You will definitely require more power as you cross them over lower.

pohljm

looks great! good job!

Gregerst

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Thanks! I really started having second thoughts when I saw how much metal I'd be cutting away. lol. When I was done cutting the whole left side of the speaker cutout was very flimsy. Because I already had deadender on the door it made it difficult to see what needed to be done but I ended using some strap metal to stiffen up part of it and then made a brace that went from the crash beam to the inner door skin. Doing that made it stronger than it was before.
What I noticed right away when playing my system with the 9 is the bass is more upfront and blends in better with the 15's. I had decent upfront bass before with the Dyn but it just wasn't totally convincing especially as the volume was turned up. They did an admirable job for 6.5's trying to keep up with two 15's though. With 190w x 2 I'm hoping they'll have enough output without getting too crazy with the excursion but I also realize I may need to feed them more power. Thanks for the tip.

Thanks man. Let me know if you're serious about these Dyn's. You can have the whole 3-way set. Even though I'm replacing them with something else they sound very, very good. I almost didn't want to replace them. I just have a tendency to go to the extreme sometimes. When I stop and think about it I have more power going to my tweeters than the entire stock ELS system has.

niebur3

Nice! What did you end up doing with the support for the window track that bolts where you cut out?

Gregerst

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Thanks. The way the speaker is made I was able to just move the bolt over about 1/2" or so and drilled a new hole and I added some washers between the door and window track bracket to take up the gap. The speaker has a perfect depth for the door, just under 3" so I didn't need to push the window track back.

niebur3

Thanks for the Pics. Unfortunately mine won't go in quite that easy. I will literally be using a shoe horn to get them to fit AND at 3.07", going to try to use a trim ring.

How are you planning on re-connecting the grill to the door panel? I had some ideas as I just separated mine as well. The only way I could see (with using a trim ring) to have any chance of fitting mine.

Gregerst

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You might be able to push the window back a bit. The problem you may have with the trim ring is now the speaker might hit the door panel. Notice how much plastic I had to cut and it still hits the outer frame of the speaker where the red dot is. Its close enough that I can still fit the panel on but I may end up having to cutting it out. The thing is I'll be cutting all the way through the panel. But I may go ahead and do it so it clears then repair it with fiberglass. It's where that little triangular rubber piece is so I can use that to cover it up.
To reattach the speaker grill I just used some sheet metal screws and washers. Just got to be careful that they aren't to long or you'll have nice screw tip coming out the other side. It was basically attached with melted plastic before and I tried to carefully drill them out leaving the plastic stems behind.

niebur3

Yeah, I was seeing that issue with that spot with mine as well. Mine are slightly smaller in diameter, so I might get lucky.

The screws are a good idea. I was also considering using neodymium magnets to re-attach, that way they are removable, especially for critical listening sessions AND to create the best seal possible between the speakers and the door panel.

Gregerst

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Removable grills would be cool. I'd like to figure out how to enlarge the speaker grill opening but still keep the OEM look.

niebur3

Well, you could enlarge the flow through area some if you get a tiny drill bit, have a steady hand, and several hours to kill. All those holes outside the inner silver trim could be drilled all the way through.

Gregerst

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Yeah that idea actually crossed mind for about two seconds. Then i realized it would be a LOT of freaking holes! Lol

pohljm

myself and IHC had looked at removing all the plastic inside of the metal trim ring and then using grille cloth held in place by the trim ring to open up the grille. It can look pretty good if done correctly. Back then everyone including me liked the way the door card increased the loading of the mid base so it was never completed. With these 9's I dont think that you need that extra help of the door card so that may be a good solution. There are some mock up shots that IHC had posted, but I do not remember what thread.

I hate cars

Yep. It looks very close to factory. It's as easy as cutting the grills out, putting some grill cloth over the area and securing it with the trim ring. Unless you own a TL you would never know it was modded. I'm still thinking about doing it due to rattles.

When I lean on these midbasses hard , it's 235cm^2 with 1" of excursion. You can feel the air being pushed through the grills. It's not the usual kick in your leg feeling, there's actual airflow. I'm thinking that can't be good.

The person to really ask is Kirk. He has those awesome AT 9s in his doors that will more a lot of air. Last I heard he was planning on keeping them factory.

As for the loading, there's no doubt you get more bass with the panel on. However, I've wondered if its cancellation since you get more of the backwave escaping from the window area and at the time my doors were not sealed as well.

It seems like if I really match the output of the 15s with the 9s at the handoff frequency, say 63hz, it requires the midbass to move quite a bit of air and then you get vibrations. This is also why I can't see myself ever running a 6.5" again no matter how great it is. I like my music loud once in a while and to truly have that balanced bass and midbass punch I just don't see how any 6.5" can do that. I loved my Esotar 650s, it was one of my hardest decisions to try the 182s instead but it was the right move. Those Esotars always sounded great, never sounded stressed or distorted, just a very, very refined and detailed midbass with a lot of punch. But when I decided to remove the door panels and see what kind of excursion I was getting it was pretty scary. I think they were rated at 21mm xmech and it looked like they had a full inch of total travel. I just couldn't continue pushing them that hard because I didn't want to hurt them. The 9s on the other hand have double the cone area so they only require half the excursion and they have 5mm more xmech. It's nice to have a lot of headroom.

Gregerst

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I thought about trying to cover it with grill cloth too. But was just going to cut out the part of the grill that doesn't have the holes leaving the rest. I'd like to get a hold of some extra grills and experiment on those.
The other idea I'm kicking around now is to just cut the whole grill out and fiberglass bigger ones in.

Gregerst

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I finished putting the other 9 in last night and installed the tweeters and mids today. I dropped the tweeters in the factory location and for now I have the mids velcroed to the kicks facing the opposing seats until I get the custom kicks built. That's going be my next project.
I did an rta to get the new speakers tuned and I have the 9's crossed at 48Hz / 24db. I played some of my favorite tracks I haven't had a lot of listening time yet but I gotta say I'm liking it a lot so far. It's definitely worth the time and effort for me. The bigger mid basses blend in and keep up with 15's really well. Bass is clean, clear, up front and I haven't noticed any excessive rattles or vibrations coming from the doors. I did spend a lot a time on them, probably 8 hours total, and I think they're stronger now then ever before. So now next project is to build the kicks.

I hate cars

Wow, 48hz is low for the midbass. I've found that to retain up front bass, assuming TA is proper with the subs is to boost the midbass near the crossover frequency and cut the subs at the same frequency. It took me a long time to have the guts to push the midbasses that much but once you have a truly seemless transition, there's so much more pop and detail in that area. The problem is, at the frequency you're going to have to push the midbasses hard to get them to the same level as the subs at the same frequency. With the efficiency differences between the midbass and subs, even 300w each is barely enough on the midbass if you like to listen to them loud.

I also had very few rattles at first but be careful, the door cards seem to loosen up over time. I've got to come up with a different solution. The rattles even though they're usually not obvious with music playing show up as the stage being pulled all over the place as the volume rises.

What's your lowpass?

Gregerst

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I'm still experimenting with the crossovers and I'm waiting until I get the kicks done with the mids aimed correctly before I really try to fine tune it. But right now I have the subs playing at 42Hz / 12db and mid bass at 52Hz / 24db. It sounds pretty awesome. Like you said upfront bass is really easy. I was listening to Def Leppard's Pryomania album tonight and it sounded like two 15's were underneath the dash. I have just enough time delay on the subs that the seat back vibrates at the same time my pant legs do. That's the nice thing about big midbass in the doors, the air movement helps cue upfront bass.

Gregerst

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Here's a few progress pics. The kicks are actually textured and primered but I haven't taken any pics yet. I'll post some more once I get them installed. Over all i think it turned out pretty good for a first timer.

pohljm

Looks real good!

Thrall

looking good mate!

niebur3

Not too bad for your first time!

Why aren't they symmetrical? You have the right midrange much higher than the left.

Gregerst

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Thanks! Going into it I didn't think it would be too difficult..it would just take some time. I probably spent about 4-5 hours total working on them. Using the fiberglass was def a learning experience. The way the fabric was stretched on the drivers kick I could only apply it from from the front side for most of it. But that wasn't enough to make it rigid so I finally had to drill holes in the plastic from the back side and pour some resin in from behind.

Yes, but it's not quite as much as the pictures make it out to be. I think it looks like a lot because the drivers kick goes up over the dead pedal. The passenger side mid is actually 1 inch higher from floor to center. The only reason was to keep it out of the way as much as possible from being kicked or damaged by passengers. I don't want to be constantly worrying about it so I put it as high as I could while still being able to aim it the way I wanted. I have them aimed at the opposing head rest, more specifically just in front of the left ear.
And I got them installed in the car tonight. Right away I noticed more depth in the sound stage. I still need to find matching paint but the primer I used is actually pretty close to my charcoal interior. Next up is getting the tweeters in the pillars. I'm thinking about mounting them about 2 -3 inches above the instrument cluster hump and aimed the same way the mids are.

Gregerst

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Some pics of them with primer and installed.

05_NBP_TL

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Awesome!

Thrall

where did you move your hood pop "switch"

Gregerst

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Thanks. Now I'm having a heck of time trying to find dark gray fabric that matches the a-pillars so far it's been a waste of time and money ordering stuff. So I may end up going with black vinyl, something that closely matches the dash.

I haven't permanently moved it yet. it's just tucked away in the back by the firewall. I might mount it underneath the dash or to the firewall.