fitting uprated speakers in a 90

[nicks90]

hi folks,

i've decided that for my birthday i am uprating the sound system in my 90csw.

I know there has been a few posts before about fitting speakers etc, but i have a rather specific (and geeky) bunch of questions.

At the moment i have a decent (ish) head unit, the front speakers have already been upgraded and i run a set of kenwood midi-system speakers in the back. Handily, most midi / micro stereos you can buy use 12v speakers and deliver 40-100w and hence can be used with a car stereo by just wiring it directly up to the headunit! The speakers at the moment are just cable tied to the uprights of my roll hoop in the back. Sound is good, but its not very elegant and it loses clarity at very high volumes and the base is not great. Metallica is a speaker killer!!!

Soooooo, i have decided a nice sub/bass speaker with 2 or 4 6-9" mid range speakers and a pair of tweeters + a suitable amp are the order of the day. Installation is where I am coming unstuck. I would like to build a small / appropriately sized mdf box to house the speakers and amp in a self contained 'unit' behind the centre bulkhead. I am happy for it to be fairly tall, but not too deep as to restrict leg room for the forward facing rear seats......

Now to the questions-

Supposedly the box needs to be a certain size depending on the sub? No idea how or why or what on this matter....But i dont want to build the box and find it kills the sound completely. Does anyone know anything about this?

also, if i make a bass box type thing to house the sub - is there any reason i couldnt cut out holes in the top or sides and mount the mid range speakers there as well? Or would the bass speaker interfere with the mids?

I want to mount the tweekers on the windscreen uprights like in the disco 2, does anybody make an aftermarket mount for this?

sorry for the questions, but i'm an ICE virgin.

nick

[Outdoor Ed]

I had a similar idea with my 90 CSW.

I eventually went for this idea:

I built the boxes out of 18mm exterior ply, much less susceptible to rotting if for any reason it might get wet, not that Land Rovers leak at all

They are very solid boxes Rather than the brackets that you can see holding them in in the picture I have actually attached them, though the bottom of the speaker boxes directly to the wheel arches.

I get a great sound quality from the boxes both bass and treble response is very good and they are pretty dammed loud running off my Alpine head unit.

Just an idea.

Ooh forgot to mention, the speakers are both 13cm, I removed the ones from the front under the dash because to be quite honest speakers pointing at the floor are a waste of time.

[Jon W]

I had this trouble and didnt want it to take up too much room. I initially had a head unit with 2 smallish round speakers up in the headlining.

To improve on that I got an amp and a bazooka Bass tube from a range rover. Nice and cheap second hand. This improved things no end as could turn music up without disstortion and got a nice bit of bass. Then i put a couple of 6x9's up in the rear corners to balance the mid range bass etc.

The bass tube is really good as it is quite compact and robust so good for the back of a land rover. The 6x9's were cheap abd I made the enclosure for them.

Jon

[Godlykepower]

Read my thread HERE to see how I overcame this dilemma.

HTH

Martin

[Dave W]

Watching this thread with interest as I'm going to be rebuilding Pam's 90 this year and one of the jobs is to improve the sound system. The LPG tank is currently behind the bulkhead and is covered in by a fairly large MDF box that I trimmed using auto carpet. The new back body has no bulkhead so I'll have to adapt the design to fully encase the LPG tank and I've been wondering about using the LPG tank "box" as a speaker housing, maybe for a sub pointing into the back and 2 forward facing mid range speakers ?

[FridgeFreezer]

Handily, most midi / micro stereos you can buy use 12v speakers

If there were such thing as a 12v speaker that would be useful.

Speakers are rated by impedance (Ohms, usually 4 or 8) and power handling (Watts power). You want to get the correct impedance for your amplifier (most car stuff is 4 Ohm) and a speaker that can handle a bit more power than your amp can produce - but not loads more or the amp won't be able to drive it hard enough to make any decent noise.

If this is news to you you should probably pause and read up a little before waving wires around. Just don't listen to any of the utter bum-juice talked by Pro Audio types, you don't need expensive gold cable (in fact normal mains cable is about the best thing for speakers for the money) and frankly in a LR you just need a decent amount of volume, sound quality will never be an issue with all the rattling and banging going on.

[haribo]

Before i start i will admit straight away that i am at an advantage. I build speakers for a living, have CAD drawing facilities and a CNC. But everyrything i have done is easily replicated with hand tools.

I went for a JBL system as i have had their stuff before and had no trouble at all.

2x 6" Mounted on spacer rings in the front original position

2x 8" Mounted on spacer rings in the rear side panels

2x 8" Mounted in corner boxes.

1x 12" Bass driver

1x 680 Watt JBL amp mounted behind passenger seat

I think the bass box will be of most interest and relevance to you as its a CSW. I went for tall and narrow but made up the internal size by shaping it into the cavity of the bulk head. It has a single 12" JBL driver which is run from the amp. If you buy a bass driver brand new then speaker normally comes with a recommended internal literage size for the box and also a port length in the fitting instructions. I used 18mm Birch ply but 18mm MDF is a good material to make bass boxes from.

If i was to give you any advice it would be not to make the all in one and try and find a place to put the speakers in components. Think of each speaker as a different piece of the sound top middle and bottom so all it has to contend with is its own part and by doing that you will have clarity. When you get your amp you will be able to adjust the sound for each of these parts. After doing mine i believe the ideal set up would be a 1x bass box behind bulk head 2X 8" mids right at the back 2x 6" mids in original position in the front with 2x tweeters in the top corners of the windscreen and a nice amp to power it all. As for a head unit i used a Sony for simple reliability again but there are lots of good cheapish ones out there. The only thing you need to do is make sure the head unit has a Pre-Out for the amp and one for the bass. This will make a world of difference when you come to fine tuning as the one for the amp will give out a wide signal from high to low but the bass will only recieve the low so you will get no distortion just really good bass.

Steer clear of 6x9 speakers they are only designed for parcel shelves. Because they are not symetrical they will distort well before a round speaker but come with good tweeters to mask this fact. All of the speakers i got were from the JBL GT range and they all came with tweeters built in.

If you like it loud then i think i have told you as much as i can without rambling on. For more in depth info then type in a search enclosure types and comparisons or go onto how stuff works website and type car audio system.

I suppose you are wondering what it sounds like? GOOD is the answer and well worth taking the time over to do properly. The only drawbacks are the Landy itself seems to distort before the music and the rear view mirror is rendered useless with vibration.

If the pictures dont work ill try again, this is the first time ive tried to put them on.

Good luck

[nicks90]

cheers everyone,

thats given me some serious food for thought.

Looks like my plan will be a bass box simillar to haribos (but i'll mount the amp inside it for protection with an access hatch) and the top rear mounted speakers and some tweeters. As i already have decent front speakers, they can stay and dont need upgrading.

Confused about pre-out etc for the headunit. I'll have to have a look at what wires are on the back of the unit. I thought it was just a case of putting all 4 channels from the stereo into the amp - it amplified and did its magic and then you used however many 'outs' you needed from the amp to the speakers and bass. Learn summink new every day on here!

Not sure how i'm going to attach the top rear speakers though. Have to have a think about that one, as they may interfere with the seatbelt top mounts for the rear seats.

fridge:-

If there were such thing as a 12v speaker that would be useful.

Speakers are rated by impedance (Ohms, usually 4 or 8) and power handling (Watts power).

i dont do hellektrikery. When my midi system in the kitchen died and refused to play cd's, all i did was stab it to death with a big knife and take the speakers off the walls. I looked at the strange numbers and hyroglyphics on the back and noticed the looked about the same as the numbers on the 6x9 speakers Sara had in the back of her old discovery. So i wired them in to the 2 unused 'rear outs' on my existing head unit and they worked! Supposed to have been just temporary - hence why the were cable tied to the roll hoop, but 3 years later they're still there....

edited to add - not going with a big bass box now, takes up too much room and i think a big 12-15" sub would rattle my motor to bits and be a bit excessive. But i do want extra bass for a more all round nicer sound. Just found this - http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/stores/...tegoryId_165748

could be the answer! fit it to the back of the centre bulkhead next to the amp and it can 'assist' the other speakers with the bass.

[Matthew]

edited to add - not going with a big bass box now, takes up too much room and I think a big 12-15" sub would rattle my motor to bits and be a bit excessive. But I do want extra bass for a more all round nicer sound. Just found this - http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/stores/...tegoryId_165748

could be the answer! fit it to the back of the centre bulkhead next to the amp and it can 'assist' the other speakers with the bass.

Nick, don't be put off the sub by the size of a 12-15" speaker, you can get some excellent sound from 10" sub's and the box they require is MUCH smaller

Different sized subs are better suited to different styles of music; 10" best suited to faster music with punchy bass lines, 12" is the best all rounder, good for fast music but can handle big deep bass lines. 15" is no good for fast music (the cones just doesn't react fast enough) but is EXCELLENT for hitting HUGE bass lines.

I’m planning to eventually fit 1x small 10" sub, in a very small box behind the bulkhead. It shouldn't take up much room at all.

As you already mentioned box size is very important. If you build a box just below the manufacturers recommendations for cubic capacity you will find the bass hits really hard and sounds extremely "tight" if you build bigger, bass gets sloppy and sounds carp! In competition sound off vehicles they make the sound travel around 6ft before it leaves the box, they do this by having channels for the sound to move through. The bass hits hardest and sounds most crisp when its has travelled around this distance..

How do I know...well please don't put me in the boy racer "******" bracket, but......(the vehicle had no gay body kits, no 2000" rims, no "bling", no boy racer gayness....just an extremely loud soundsystem B)

This system had a total of 10200watts of amps. 2x 15" subs with 5" of cone travel (moved ALOT of air!) 2x 1.2fared capacitors, 2x massive odyssey batteries, audiobahn bass controllers and line drivers, 1x Diamond HEX component speakers......all together used to hit around 154-157db (a Boeing 747 usually makes around 150db of sound during takeoff...)

Head unit pre-out is the voltage/power output of the RCA channels - most standard head units would be around 1-1.5Volt pre-out. The competition head units are more like 5-8volt, then we used line drivers to boost this even higher. If buying a head unit to be used with amps/larger systems, get the highest pre-out voltage you can, it will make an enormous difference to the overall sound output and quality.

For normal speakers: You need to connect RCA cables (front L, front R, rear L, rear R = 4 total) from the hear unit to the amp, then speaker cables from the output of the amp/s to your speakers.

For sub: Same as above but the head unit should have a specific "sub out" pair of RCA cables. These need to go into a specific input on the amp, known as a class D block (doesn't put high fq that normal speakers use into the sub) Then connect speaker cables from the amp "sub out" to the sub.

If you haven't bought the amp yet and plan on running 4x speakers + 1x sub ideally you'll want 1x 5 channel amp (1 channel must be intended for the sub) or alternatively you could have 1x 4 channel amp for normal speakers, then 1x class D mono block for the sub.

New or old you should be able to get hold of the manufacturers recommended box size for the sub, just try the internet.....The LR4x4 for the sound off world...

http://www.talkaudio.co.uk/

I hope this is of use, pm me if you've got any specific questions or I can be of any help with your setup.

Cheers,

matt

[Matthew]

....the basic 12volt supply looked like this when the system was in its first revision....but you get complacent with the sound level very quickly...and always want more!?!

Matts_Car.pdf

[nicks90]

wow - this is opening up a whole new world of dead braincells for me.

Not only do i hate hellektrikery (i drive a diesel for a reason!), buts its also hellektrikery and sound!!!

But i'm actually enjoying learning something new here, been having a look on chav-central forums and the FAQs on how to wire up the stereo into the amp and all the basic stuff on what to buy and combos etc... before you know it i'll be adding megasquirt to the bloody thing

I even know the difference between max and rms power now!

[henrik]

Replaced the original LR stereo for a Blaupunkt with front aux for my iPod, Audiobahn speakers in the front, Lanzar sub in the back connected to a Boss 1000W amp.

Here are some pictures of how I did it.

[Defender56]

Replaced the original LR stereo for a Blaupunkt with front aux for my iPod, Audiobahn speakers in the front, Lanzar sub in the back connected to a Boss 1000W amp.

Here are some pictures of how I did it.

Henrik, what's that little computer you have behind your steering wheel? I can see it gives you the temperature. Looks interesting.

[henrik]

The little "computer" give me the outside temperature. In spring and autumn it is nice to know if it is water or ice on the road. Earlier today it was water on the roads, but when I was out driving 15 minutes ago it was ice. +1 or -1 degree C can make a big difference on the driving conditions.

LINK to a norwegian page with a better picture.

[FridgeFreezer]

Believe it or not some of the best speakers use multiple smaller drivers rather than one large one - the theory being that bass is about moving air around so a 4x10" cabinet can move more air than a 2x12" or 1x15"/1x18" in the same box space, plus the smaller drivers can deliver more punch. My bass guitar amp had 4x10" speakers and certainly never sounded lacking.

Back in the days when I read Max Power they tested a load of subs and there was one that contained a single 6" driver and some very very clever cabinet design, it wiped the floor with everything else - even massively powerful 18" subs couldn't hit the low notes as well as this thing did.

[nicks90]

Back in the days when I read Max Power they tested a load of subs and there was one that contained a single 6" driver and some very very clever cabinet design, it wiped the floor with everything else - even massively powerful 18" subs couldn't hit the low notes as well as this thing did.

thats the principle Bose use in their go faster home stereo systems. I think their radio alarm clock is superb! Louder and clearer than most stereo systems and about the size of a house brick. istr the blurb said it has 2 feet of pipework inside it that the air has to move through which does the magic.

back on topic, her indoors has said i can have my birthday present early this year - so hopefully i'll be going shopping at the end of April to get shiny things. At the moment I'm leaning towards a full system package from FLI. FLIswat head unit, FLItrap 10" sub in a box with FLI 450w/rms amp and 2x 6" FLI9 3 way speakers in the back corners and 2x FLI little speakers to replace the front dash mounted ones. Comes complete with all the wiring required and with it all being by Fli its meant to fit together as a set. Should be nice and sparkly and make my Metallica sessions on the way in to work a bit more studio quality.

I'm also very impressed with the tweeters Henrik has fitted, nice! Where they easy to fit on the top of the dash like that?

[henrik]

I'm also very impressed with the tweeters Henrik has fitted, nice! Where they easy to fit on the top of the dash like that?

Took me an evening in the garage, took out the dash top, much easier to work on when you can put it on the workbench.

Used a "drill saw" ( don't know if that is the correct word) to make a perfect hole in the soft material, then I used a Dremel with a small grinder disc to make the holes in the steel.

At the same time I also mounted "DefenderVENT". I liked the instructions on how to find all the screws and bolts that hold the dash together. You can find them at Mudstuff's homepage.

http://www.mudstuff.co.uk/fitting_instructions.shtml

[dirkthe1]

get a closed back one ten or one thirty and then get one of these!