# DIY: Front Speaker Upgrade



## MisterJJ (Jul 28, 2005)

Upgraded my stock (non-Bose) speakers with Phoenix Gold 6.5" Component Speakers (RSD 65cs).

Door panel removal is pretty straightforward. Pry out the plastic cover around the door lock switch and remove the screw behind it. Another two screws on the bottom and one above the side pocket will get the panel loose. Lift the panel up and then unhook the cable to the door latch and unplug the electrical connection. If you have trouble, look up a detailed door panel removal DIY.

With the panel out of the way, remove the screws holding the stock speaker, lift up and away from the door, and remove speaker wire plug. Here's the stock speaker:










There's a rubber seal around the speaker that has to be removed. Just start peeling and it comes off pretty easily:










Now the fun begins. The speaker is integrated into the speaker mounting so it has to be ripped apart. I took care to leave the wires attached to the housing because I wanted to use them for the new speaker. Alternatively, you can just drill a hole in the housing and run wires directly to the speaker.










Here's the stock speaker and new speaker:










Now to remove the innards of the speaker housing. This is some tough plastic! Very hard to cut. I wound up having to saw it apart.










After cutting out the center:










Here you can see the whopper of the magnet used on the stock speaker.










My speaker was just slightly too deep to fit so I had to cut the plastic fins off the back too.










Unfortunately, the new speaker wouldn't quite fit within the plastic lip so that gets cut off too.










Next I cleaned up the speaker wires, put shrink wrap on them, and attacked the plugs for the speaker.










To locate the speaker mounting screws I test fitted the speaker in place and rotated it to get some clearance for the terminals. I drilled the first hole for the speaker screws and realized that the screw would interfere with the stock plug so I rotated the speaker a bit and drilled the 4 holes for mounting screws. Be VERY careful not to accidentally put a drill bit, screw, or screwdriver through your new speaker!










Here's the mounted speaker, front:










And the back:










Reinstall speaker and door panel. Don't forget to attach the electrical plug and door latch cable!

Next we have to access the wiring. Remove the dash side cover by pulling straight out. Remove the glove box (Three bolts inside/top edge, two bolts underneath, and one bolt from the side at the top corner. Remove the plastic cover in the lower-front of the door opening. There is a clip near the top and then it just lifts up and out.










Now we need to locate and cut the speaker wires. I pulled apart the wire bundle where the door wiring joins with a main bundle and located the wires. They are Gray and Green/Gray, are twisted together, and are larger diameter than most of the other wires. I cut the wires at this point.










Then I found the same wires in the bundle at a point near to where the wires enter the side panel on their way to the door and I pulled the wires out so I had several inches of wire available. I did the same thing in the main bundle, but it was a lot harder to locate the wires. You can just see them in this picture:










From there I moved on to the tweeter. The A-pillar is removed by prying out a clip near the top and then sliding the cover upwards. You could probably just remove the speaker grill but it seemed hard to do without breaking it. Rotate the speaker and align the notches to remove it from the grill. Here's the stock tweeter and the new tweeter.










I like the way that the stock housing angles the speaker into the cabin but wasn't sure how I could make this work with the new speaker. The new speaker wound up being a box inside a box and got down to a reasonable size eventually.










Upon close inspection of the stock speaker I found that it is attached with four tabs that have some sticky goop on them.










I pried the tabs out and removed the speaker.










The new speaker is a bit bigger, but can still fit within the tabs on the plastic speaker mount.










I put a drop of glue at each tab and then wrapped some cloth tape around to secure the speaker to the mount. I then installed it back into the grill.










It's kinda tricky to figure out how to fit the speaker mount in the grill. Here's a close up of it correctly installed:










I fed the wires down towards the wires for the door speaker. (You can also see where I wrapped the original speaker wire plug with cloth tape and zip tied out of the way.)










Now I had to locate the crossover. I found it would just barely fit against the side panel, below the metal bracket, shown in the following picture, and above where the bottom edge of the glove box would go. I placed some double-stick foam tape behind it and had room to drill a hole in the side panel for one bolt to secure it in place.










Now I just had to add some extension wires for the tweeter and attach terminals to the wires. Here it is all wired up:










The “oops” is because I test fitted the glove box and the wires there were clear but after I installed the glove box I discovered that the dampener for the glove box door rotated into that space. Luckily there was a hole in the metal bracket at just the right place for me to secure the wires out of the way.










One more detail is to get rid of that middle front speaker. Pry up the cover, remove the four screws, and unplug it. (Pretty cool how it has the four rings in the speaker grill... where nobody can see it.)










I actually did the driver's side first but never took pictures or anything because I had no idea the install would be so complicated. On the drivers side I did mostly the same thing except there wasn't room to put the crossover anyplace except up in the dash. I put it right behind the fuse panel at first but I got this horrible buzzing sound from the speakers even when the stereo was off! I relocated the crossover just on the other side of the metal panel behind the fuse panel and it worked fine.

If you haven't already done so, you should disconnect the horrible rear sub-woofer now that you have some speakers with some decent bass.

That's it! As usual, any corrections, comments, and criticisms are not welcome... But don't let that stop you. 

The sound is sooo much better now. I was worried that the stock sub wouldn't be enough to power the new speakers but I turned the volume up to where I thought it was the highest I could possibly ever want to hear it and I wound up on 28. The maximum volume setting is 30.


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## lair12 (Jul 27, 2010)

*great*

Thanks for the detailed pics and write-up. May be very useful in the future.

Could you not just change out the stock speakers and get better performance? What is the crossover for?


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## Uber-A3 (Feb 23, 2002)

man you need to buy a Dremel


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## MisterJJ (Jul 28, 2005)

lair12 said:


> Thanks for the detailed pics and write-up. May be very useful in the future.
> 
> Could you not just change out the stock speakers and get better performance? What is the crossover for?


The crossover splits the frequency between the two speakers fairly accurately so the high notes go to the tweeter and everything else goes to the other speaker.

Do you see the black cylinder on the stock tweeter? That's a crappy way of doing the same thing by dampening out the lower frequency for the tweeter. It doesn't work very well and is probably the main cause of the muddled sound of the stock system.


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## MisterJJ (Jul 28, 2005)

Uber-A3 said:


> man you need to buy a Dremel


I've got one around somewhere. I never use it because it takes longer to dig it out and find the right attachment than to just use a hand saw or jig saw. The dremel usually makes a much bigger mess too. But... they are a lot more fun to use!


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## ProjectA3 (Aug 12, 2005)

pretty cool setup.

but could the aftermarket speakers not just drop into the factory locations without having to re-use the basket they were in?


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## lair12 (Jul 27, 2010)

*Is this all you spent?*

http://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-RSD6-..._5?ie=UTF8&s=automotive&qid=1281951009&sr=8-5


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## lair12 (Jul 27, 2010)

*Easier speaker wire access?*

Would it have been just as easy to pull the radio and get access to the speaker wires from the back and not have to get into wire bundles where dealers tend to dislike when service work is needed and they want to pass off the blame?


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## krazyboi (May 19, 2004)

Good work sir! :beer:


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## MisterJJ (Jul 28, 2005)

ProjectA3 said:


> pretty cool setup.
> 
> but could the aftermarket speakers not just drop into the factory locations without having to re-use the basket they were in?


There is no factory location. That "basket" is it. It is a speaker mounting and speaker all-in-one that just bolts up to the door panel. I've seen other installs that use MDF Fiberboard to recreate the mounting but the way I did it seems like less work and I know the alignment is correct.


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## MisterJJ (Jul 28, 2005)

lair12 said:


> Would it have been just as easy to pull the radio and get access to the speaker wires from the back and not have to get into wire bundles where dealers tend to dislike when service work is needed and they want to pass off the blame?


I'm out of warranty so I don't care what the dealer thinks. Besides, it would be pretty hard to blame a broken part on pulling some wires out of a bundle. Unless it's a broken wire at that point, which would be blame placed appropriately.

Also, I've added aftermarket bluetooth which required a bunch of extra wires, plugs, and modules to be stuffed behind the stereo so there isn't room for the crossovers. After that experience I have an aversion to messing around with that glob of wires back there.


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## LWNY (Jul 30, 2008)

MisterJJ said:


> Here you can see the whopper of the magnet used on the stock speaker.


The magnet is not that small a size, if anything is small, it is the voice coil, which seems to be 1/2" diameter. Either way, neither needs to be humongous in size for a midrange driver.

With the center channel disconnected, aren't you getting less balanced frontal soundstage? With the sounds getting pulled to the speaker you are closest to?

Also, how is the subwoofer balanced? Do you attenuate the whole mid/tweeter setup? Given that your replacement speaker has larger magnet, hence higher sensitivity?


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## MisterJJ (Jul 28, 2005)

I'm no audiophile. I just know that the sound from the stock system sucks and wanted something better. I'm not sure if I can give adequate answers, but I'll try.



LWNY said:


> The magnet is not that small a size, if anything is small, it is the voice coil, which seems to be 1/2" diameter. Either way, neither needs to be humongous in size for a midrange driver.


The sub-woofer, which is smaller than the door speakers, is a joke. I got rid of that a long time ago and the sound improved greatly. So the doors have to provide the mid-range and low end. Need more power (bigger magnet) for that.



LWNY said:


> With the center channel disconnected, aren't you getting less balanced frontal soundstage? With the sounds getting pulled to the speaker you are closest to?


I like clarity to sound. The crummy center speaker just muddles the sound so I got rid of it.



LWNY said:


> Also, how is the subwoofer balanced? Do you attenuate the whole mid/tweeter setup? Given that your replacement speaker has larger magnet, hence higher sensitivity?


Lost me here. Like I said, there is no subwoofer in my system. My stereo is for me, not for shaking the windows of the car next to me. With my current setup I had to tone the bass down slightly to get a good balance. Attenuation... I believe the crossover handles that part, right? There's a switch between 0db and +2db. At +2db the tweeters were to "bright", if I have the terminology correct. I liked the sound better at 0db. Not sure if that answers the question.


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## LWNY (Jul 30, 2008)

MisterJJ said:


> The sub-woofer, which is smaller than the door speakers, is a joke. I got rid of that a long time ago and the sound improved greatly. So the doors have to provide the mid-range and low end. Need more power (bigger magnet) for that.


I am not familiar with the stock sub, given that I only have the blowse unit. But in general, the blowse unit, not having a driver of high excursion, is limited in absolute SPL level, although it seems to have a transmission line design (long folded port), which, if the puny driver by itself would be only adequate for AM radio, to adequately reproduce mid bass.





MisterJJ said:


> I like clarity to sound. The crummy center speaker just muddles the sound so I got rid of it.


You couldn't replace the center fill speaker with an aftermarket one?





MisterJJ said:


> Lost me here. Like I said, there is no subwoofer in my system. My stereo is for me, not for shaking the windows of the car next to me. With my current setup I had to tone the bass down slightly to get a good balance. Attenuation... I believe the crossover handles that part, right? There's a switch between 0db and +2db. At +2db the tweeters were to "bright", if I have the terminology correct. I liked the sound better at 0db. Not sure if that answers the question.


W/O the sub, then you just have to provide balance between the bass unit and tweeter. But that is a pretty small bass unit. Looks like you have a British mini monitor setup.


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## MisterJJ (Jul 28, 2005)

LWNY said:


> I am not familiar with the stock sub, given that I only have the blowse unit. But in general, the blowse unit, not having a driver of high excursion, is limited in absolute SPL level, although it seems to have a transmission line design (long folded port), which, if the puny driver by itself would be only adequate for AM radio, to adequately reproduce mid bass.


Wow... I didn't even have to duck for that one.


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## eurotrsh (Dec 25, 2004)

Wow, you couldve used a Metra speaker spacer that are $18 as opposed to chopping your speaker apart.

You made that really hard on yourself.


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## MisterJJ (Jul 28, 2005)

eurotrsh said:


> Wow, you couldve used a Metra speaker spacer that are $18 as opposed to chopping your speaker apart.
> 
> You made that really hard on yourself.


My motto is "Free, cheap, or easy". In that order. Free outranks easy.

But I haven't seen anything available that is plug-and-play. I didn't even see anything on the Metra site for the A3. If you know of something that works, post a link for others that may want it.


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## eurotrsh (Dec 25, 2004)

http://www.abt.com/product/35199/Metra-824300.html?utm_source=scfroogle
or
http://www.amazon.com/Metra-Speaker-Adapters-82-7803/dp/B0003MLSME

These will mount to the door and then mount your speaker the spacer.

I use the all the time on VW/Audi that have riveted speakers that are attached to their spacer or like these cars with the weird tabs.


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## VWAddict (Jun 12, 1999)

I guess we have different standards.

I think the stock system sounds pretty damn good, and I wonder how good a system which RETAILS out at $85 sounds...

Not a mod for me, I think.


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## terje_77 (Dec 19, 2005)

opcorn:


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## MisterJJ (Jul 28, 2005)

VWAddict said:


> I think the stock system sounds pretty damn good, and I wonder how good a system which RETAILS out at $85 sounds...


I've never been too particular about sound quality myself but the system in the A3 just seemed bad from the start. I got totally disgusted when I rented a Hyundai and it had a remarkably better sound system.

Check the reviews for these speakers. It has been said that you would have to pay at least 3 times as much to get better sounding speakers. Most critisisms seem to come from the hard-core audiophiles. They sound like a huge improvement to me. Sometimes it's not accurate to judge quality based on a price tag alone.


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## LWNY (Jul 30, 2008)

Phoenix Gold doesn't seem to be a bang for the bux type of brand.  Maybe you could have fine tuned the original speakers by placing silicone dots or holes in the driver to break up any of the resonance that you might have been offended to. Or maybe get something costing a little more given how much work you went through to get them installed. I have the Blowse stereo so maybe I don't know how bad the stock units are.


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## jowsley0923 (Oct 13, 2008)

yeah stock speakers sucked IMO
i upgraded to hertz mlk's for my fronts and they are of course much better than stock haha


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