I have a set of the MB Quart QSD213's, which are the 5 1/4" top of the line component speakers from MB Quart. I want to install them in my new TSX, but scared that they might not fit in my front door. Plus, I am not a fan of separating the tweeter from the mid like Acura does. It ruins the imaging. I would probably just have a bridge built to suspend the tweeter above the mid in the door.

If this is not possible, then I would like to put the tweeter in the factory position, and just make sure the crossover is set to -6db for the tweet. Plus, the corssovers need a lot of open air, si I guess I will have to put them in the trunk or find somewhere else.

Does anyone have any ideas or suggestions? Has anyone installed these exact speakers? Plus, I need to find a place to put my big amp. I want it out of sight and screwing it into the back of the rear seats looks unfinished and low quality. (That is how I had my past two installs done, bu with a nice car like this, I need it to look just as good as the Acura itself.

Thanks.

 

Actually, it doesn't ruin the imaging, if you use a tweeter that plays smoothly and authoritatively below 4.5K. With that tweet in the OE spot, you have a lot of what I call "headphone stereo" (apologies to the headphone fans, it's just an analogy).

You get L...L and R...R... but you really don't get front and center. The speakers are too far apart and on a 90-degree angle.

If you use tweeters in the OE spot that are soft dome and play low (2.5K or lower) you get much reduced "float" between the two drivers and you get a much better front stage with the image lacking the gap in the center.

But anyway, as just described, the 5" should fit fine with a spacer similar to the F spacer I made here:

https://acurazine.com/forums/audio-video-electronics-navigation-22/step-step-making-spacers-door-speakers-286546/

And since the xovers for my speakers are HUGE, I removed the 1" of foam under the carpet on the pass firewall and put my speaker xovers on top of the floor, under the carpet in place of the foam. Seems to work fine - the carpet backing is stiff plastic, so it still looks flat, even when I put my feet on them (you could also put a 1/4" piece of masonite cover over them if it was a big deal...

Why do you say they need "air"? Do you just mean the'yre big, or...?

What amp do you have, what year car do you have (05?)

 

Well, the crossovers are about 7" wide and 5" high each. They are huge and are ventilated, and the manual says to install it where there will be open air (not under plexiglass, etc....). My car is an '04, but I only have 4,000 miles on it.

I guess I will just put the tweets down by the mids in the door. I don't have the time or tools to do this myself, so I will probaby have to pay someone to do this. The amp is an Alipne MRD-F752 5 channel amp. The front four channels will power my components. I am going to Bi-amp them, and send about 220 watts RMS to each side. I did this in my last car, and it sounded absolutely amazing. I will run the rear speakers off of the headunit power (since rear fill is annoying anyways), and I will run the sub off the 5th channel on my amp (birth sheet that came with the amp rated it at 389x1 RMS). I used to have it hooked up to a 10W7, but not sure what sub I will use instead (10W7 needs about 500 RMS to really sounds good).

I need to find a place to put my amp and crossovers still. Hmmm, I want it to look good and not cost me an arm and a leg. Sounds impossible.

 

One reason I ask about your car is that, since the pass seat is NOT powered on the 2004, there is some room under there. I used the JL 300/4 amp specifically because it would fit under there (I had to shim the R of the seat about 3mm - not needed to put your xovers under there). Your xovers should fit under the seat if you wish - plenty of air.

I've done the R fill off of the OE amp in the TSX... may I suggest just abandoning it? As you mention, rear fill is irrelevant, and it wasn't worth the work of keeping the OE amp and the new amp working. This would let you use the OE fader in the HU as a subwoofer level control, which is nice...

I have seen skilled metal workers make brackets to hang the amp under the R deck... but I think your only cheap option is to have a board vertical in one rear trunk corner, and have a thin panel that screens the amp from direct view. Think of a 3/4" amp board, and a 1/4" panel mounted to it with 3" thick standoffs, with the amp underneath (edited to read in-between), and plenty of ventilation on the sides and top. Upholster the amp board with gray chia fur (SOMEONE has to find some gray trunk liner that is an exact match!: )

If you look at my spacer photos, you may see a problem. I assume that your mids have a lot of travel, and if these are mounted to the front of a spacer that mates to the R of the door, there might not be enough space in front for a tweeter (the mid will hit the tweeter bridge, I'm afraid). A good installer can overcome this by a combination (if needed) of attaching the tweeter to the inside of the door panel, right up against the grille, and not spacing the mid out quite as far but putting another ring over the top - so it still mates up but doesn't place the cone as far forward (think 1/2" spacer and then 1/4" fascia ring in front of that...)

 

Thanks for all of your help. I am worried that they won't fit. I would love to install them, but I might have to seel them and buy something that has less mounting depth. I will talk to my friend who installs his own stuff and see what we come up with. The speakers themselves are already 3"- 4" deep without travel.

Why does Honda leave so little mounting depth in their doors? There is no way to fit any quality speaker in there (Dynaudio, MB Quart, Rainbows, Focal Utopia's. etc....) without having to do some major work.

You have definitely come up with some good ideas of where to put the amp, and I will proably take your advice. Like you, I want to find some good trunk liner that matches perfectly (no chia pet fur).

Hopefully I can start installing stuff soon, and I will take pics of the install once it was done, and also let people know how I fit the speakers in there.

Any more suggestions would be appreciated as well.

 

The TSX doors have been measured at 3.75" of usable F door speaker depth. (Not by me, but sounds about right...)

I am confident these tweeters could easily fit without a door-panel-mating spacer, which is fairly rare, but I have had great midbass results with this approach. When the speaker doesn't mate to the door panel like the OE ones did, midbass suffers.