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I have a premium ILX, that has the 7 speaker factor set-up. I've installed sound proofing for the car that has helped the sound quality (see my other post on installing the sound proofing), but now I want to upgrade the sound system (keeping the factory head unit). I've read good reviews on the ELS sound system in the ILX and figured that would be the easiest upgrade to my current set-up. You can buy the additional mid range speakers rather affordably new or used and I've seen several used ELS amps for less than $100 online. But I haven't been able to find out how similar my system (particularly the wiring) is to the ELS (10 speakers). Has anyone done this or a similar upgrade (adding the front center and additional rear deck speakers) to a lower ILX? I don't see the wiring harness for the rear speakers under the deck (although I'm not an expert by any means), and remove the center speaker cover and couldn't find any wiring behind it. I'm assuming this means that I need to get a new wiring harness? Also, does anyone know where the ELS amp is located and do I have current wiring to there? Basically could I install the ELS amp and improve the current speakers and sub I have?
If it turns out I need to redo all the wiring to install the three additional speakers (which is what I suspect is necessary), then I plan on just replacing the two front door tweeters with the ELS versions and replace the rear sub with a Kicker Subwoofer (Kicker 43CWR82 CompR 8 Inch 2 Ohm 300 Watt RMS Power and 600 Watts Peak Power Dual Voice Coil Car Audio Sub Subwoofer, Black), without any
other upgrades and see if that sounds good enough.
I purchased the ELS tweeters for the front two doors (part number 39120-STK-A31) and they were super easy to swap out with the current ones! The wiring connector was the same, so it was just unplugging the old speaker and popping it out of the housing (used a flat head screw driver to pop it out of the housing). Then I pushed the new speaker into place, which fit perfectly, reconnected the wires and pushed the cover back into place. Took about 5 mins total and sounds better already! One thing i noticed was the ELS tweeter is considerably thinner and has a small electrical device next to the wiring connector. I would have imagined the speaker would be as big or bigger to improve performance, but I guess that's not accurate.
Original "premium" tweeter on left, new ELS replacement tweeter on the right.
Original "premium" tweeter on left, new ELS replacement tweeter on the right.
2016 ILX Premium
