I'm looking to put in an entire system and i hate how the sound imaging is ruined when i have my leg against the door. I want to install some tweeters and I am not sure where to put them. I have talked to some dealers and they suggested the dash or the plastic running around the doorframe. I think it would look good with in a minimum of work to put some in the black plastic panel on the inside of the door where the mirror is. I've seen this on Camrys and Civics factory. Does anyone have a lead on a kit or some stories or pics of an install? Can wires be run there? Need some ideas. I'm looking to get a Pioneer DEH-P9400MP and go from there.

I have a 99, if that helps.

 

yeah i have thought about putting some tweeters there as well... i was looking at the civics and wondering if they might fit the tl but other than that i do not know of any kits available to put them there...

 

hey dol i have infinity kappa 60.5cs components in my front doors with the tweeters mounted in the little black triangular plastic by the door(i'm assuming thats what your talking about). installation was simple i did it myself. that little black piece comes off totally separte from the door panels its just held in with some push clips, and theres plenty of room behind to snake the wire down. my tweeters came with options for inthe door mounts or surface mount holders. so i used the surface mount holders, attached them each with 2 tiny screws and hadda drill a small hole to feed the wire through. all in all my install came out pretty dam good. if i knew how to post pictures i would but i don't sorry. i can probably email them to you directly if you want.

 

i think he is talking about something a little more custom looking... me personally i think it looks tacky to have the tweeters stick out like that but to each his own...

 

the little black triangles in the front corners of the door are called 'sail panels' and a small black tweeter mounted on a little black pod is barely noticable. I dont think its tacky. What would be tacky is if i had mounted the tweeters of my Polk Momos using the pods as they came from the box, since they came in silver! I painted them with flat black before mounting them. The imaging is nice and honestly, you barely notice them because its all black.

another option i considered was to mount them behind the "A" panels - the vertical pieces covered with cloth that flank the left and right side of the windshield. To do it right, you'd have to remove the cloth carefully, cut out perforations for the sound to get out, mount the tweeter behind the perforations on the rear of the A panels with a metal strap and a dab or two of hot glue, and then carefully use 3M Super77 spray adhesive to stick the cloth back on. Once it was done, it would be completely hidden behind the panels. I was going to do it on my car (i was a professional installer for 15 years) and i can tell you there is enough depth behind there for neodymium tweeters to fit, but i decided at the end of the day that all the work really wouldnt be worth the effort - again the tweeters mounted to the sails are hardly noticable.

 

iggy

 

see that is what i am talking about those speakers just look really out of place... i am thinking about putting my tweeters right next to the midbass in the door... there is plenty of room there to mount them and this way the tweeter and the midbass with be closer together which i have always heard you are suppose to keep them as close together as possible...

 

Shaw, NO NO NO NO NO!

You are right I was looking for a custom sail panel that I could buy, mount a tweeter in, and simply replace the factory one and make it look good. However: don’t put your tweeters down by your knees!
I had the same setup in my old car because it was factory. I mounted some good components and it sounded terrible. The imaging is awful unless you surface mount them and point them at your face, then you have expensive equipment at knee level sticking out of the door. The only way to get good sound out of a tweet is to point it right at your head, and that means the sail panel is probably the best way to go with little or no modding. I think you’ll be really disappointed if you put your tweets down there, people back me up on this. Also, thanks for your good ideas, I’ll probably surface mount them to the sail panel if nobody has anything else.

 

i would have to disagree... you can angle mount the tweeters in the door and still get pretty good imaging... if it was a bad thing to mount tweeters so low than what is all the hype about kickpanels... what i have been read is you want both the right and left speaker equal distance away from your ears so the sounds meet your ears at about the same time... if you put the tweeters on the sail panel the left speaker (driver side) will over power the passanger speaker... and also if you have noticed alot of the speaker makers out there are making components that you can mount to gether... (ie, cdt, boston acoustic, image dynamics... etc)

 

The easiest way to get great imaging is when the tweet is mounted as close to the mid as possible. My CDT braxials have a mounting bracket that allows me to mount the tweeter in front of the mid for awesome imaging. Ask Ron (StreetEffectz), he installed them.

Here's a few pics:

 

well i am glad that someone agrees with me... and actually nsxnext your car was the one i had in mind when i thought of my component installation... i wanted the cdts but they were a little out of my price range... and i just emailed ron a similar question about the imaging with the tweeters in the stock location...

 

I personally do not like the sound of tweets in the sail panels. I have Image Chameleons in my doors and I think they sound great. I would like to be able to angle the tweeter a bit but, I think it sounds much more realistic mounted in front of the woofer. Just my .02 on it.

 

He's dead right. The best imaging will come from a "coaxial" type speaker alignment. He's just using a very high dollar version of the coax with his CDTs

I'm using the ID Chameleon's with the tweeter mounted on the center of the mid to do the same thing. It may seem much "cooler" to mount the tweeter in the sail panel or somewhere on the door panel...but imaging will suffer. I did so in my last car and found out the hard way.

The closer your tweeter is to the mid/woofer the better imaging you'll get. I've heard the best you can do is from a set of kickpanels. I'd be willing to try it if they made a decent set for our cars.

 

i had this same disagreement with someone "well respected" on this forum a while back....its all true. you get phase shift anomalies when you separate the mid from its tweeter at the xover point between them...that makes for bad mojo...so dont do it, unless you have enough processing power to correct the probem and some higher end tweets that help that process...focal w/the waveguide(cough cough)

 

Just out of curiosity. Does the tweeter pod from the CL fit the TL?

 

I have the same set up as iggys with my Boston Z6's... works great... and easy to switch back to original with i go to trade in the car...

 

no, it doesnt work. the angle on the cl door is more raked than on our car, obviously cause it is a two door and the door is longer than our front door...

btw, if you havent noticed, a tweet will not fit behind that panel on our cars...its tooo shallow.