The Stereo Slow-Build Begins

Add me to that club as well...

 

Last week, I was having some strange issues with my stereo. The bass was up too high no matter what setting I had my drc-200 sub knob on. I would have an Eagles song on and the subs would be thumping.
I thought that maybe something went wrong with the fix86's calibration, so I recalibrated it.....no luck. I checked the gain on the amp and everything is normal.
I called up James at tech12volts and he said that he has had a drc-200 malfunction before, and that is probably the problem. He said that JL came out with a new drc-205 knob and he would send me one.
The new one looks pretty slick. I have no idea if it changes anything with regards to the functionality, but looks cool. Hopefully I'll swap them out this weekend and send the old one back to James.

 

Out with the old:


In with the new:


I'm not too happy that ive got a whole in my center console that's unused, but its not visible from anywhere except from the very front cup holder. I'll get over it. I did have to make the hole bigger for the new knob (5/8" i believe), other than that it was pnp.

As for the issue i was having about too much bass. Turns out that my DRC-200 knob wasn't broken, somehow my hd900/5 amp got switched to 4ch mode. I had send a pic of my amp settings to James at tech12volts, and he spotted that. I offered to pay for the new knob, since the old one wasn't defective, and he said just to return it. What a great guy.

The new one isn't anything special over the older one that i can tell. Not worth upgrading if anyone is thinking about it, but defiantly worth getting the new one if you need to buy one, because the light isn't so goddamn blindingly bright.

 

I'm late to the party but wow!!! Got me itchin' to upgrade my sound system. Great thread. Read more than my college years .Hahaha .

 

I had disconnected my dash tweeters since they are powered by the head unit, and with the fix86's volume knob, there's a difference on what sound output went to the tweeters vs the door speakers. I always wanted to get something working in the dash locations but i thought i'd have to ditch my 5 channel amp and try to find a 6 or 8 channel amp to try to drive all these guys. I talked with James at Tech12volts and he said just to plug wire them into the front channels of my 5 channel amp. Sold! I opted to get C2's for the L/R and C1's for the centers, James recommeded going this route since i was powering them off of the amp, the other option with the 3" infinity's would have overpowered my door speaker she said. I grabbed a L/R and Center tweeter kit and man, i'm impressed with what they came up with (especially the center channel).

I bet it took quite a bit of revisions to get that right

I got them installed today. Wiring them was a bit of a pain, but not the end of the world. I just fished some 16ga speaker wire from the left tweeter above the steering column, across the center console, below the glove compartment, along the side channel and into the amp rack. Then did basically the same thing with the center and right speakers. all nice and tidy.


hands down, the hardest part of this install was getting three wires into each of the front channels terminals. The JL HD900/5 has this harness that unplugs from the amp and uses set screws to pinch the wires.

It was a pain, not sure if a standard speaker connector (little screws with two square washers) would have been any easier, but this took me a couple trys to get them in there snug.


I may go back through and use some copper crimp connectors and then screw them into the harness.

All the speaker brackets fit perfectly with the factory holes. My ocd twitched a little bit with the JL logo being off center, but james had glued them in that way, and they will be covered by the dash panels.






Initial thoughts:
These things scream!!!!!! It add a whole level of treble to the sound. Songs that i remember hearing one way, sound a lot different now. I'll need to figure out how to tame them down a bit, and bring out the mids a bit more. I'll see what james has to say about it. its an awesome addition to the stereo.

 

You have inspired me to start my build.

 

Nice!

 

Is doing this worth it? I just unplugged mine. I have good tweeters in my sail panels, JL Audio ZR'S. Seems like you'd get a lot of treble in your face. You recommend these? I did want to add something in the center.

 

It is a lot , you could probably get away with just the centers.
I might try putting some 3" in the sides and keep the center as is.
I still need to spend some time in the truck and see how I like it

 

Good choices!

 

Nice build. How much are those T12V dash speaker mounts? Thanks.

 

I had my installer put tweets in my dash also. I love highs and the sail panel tweets weren't enough for me, especially with 8" mids in the doors. I didn't replace my center speaker though, is yours playing music, or just working for the nav commands?

 

There's a group buy happening right now for the tweeter setup. Check the deals and group buy section.

Edit.
Here you go
https://www.tundras.com/threads/upd...peaker-group-buy-valid-through-2-28-19.39104/

 

Mine plays music (haven't used the onboard navi in a while but it would play through the tweeters also).

 

How did you wire the center speaker? I keep hearing people say you have to run a wire from the left / right speakers so that it works?

 

So after driving around for a while, it's just too much trebel for my liking. I really like the way that the dash tweeters have changed the sound stage and added some additional resolution to music.....but it's too much. Playing at high volumes almost hurts.

I reached out to James and asked for his advice on trying to add a small amplifier to my system to control the gain for the dash tweeters. He suggested an easier solution.....an L-Pad. I had no idea what he was talking about, at first I was scratching my head, thinking that he mistyped "iPad". He sent me a link a bit later, and it looks like a stereo potentiometer. Seems like a good solution. It should be here in a week or so...

 

I finally got around to installing the L-Pak.

First of all, this thing is a BEAST.....a lot bigger than i thought it would be. I started off by designing a mount for it in CAD.


Then i 3d printed it using my Ender 3. I wish i would have made the open support a little longer, but with how tightly the closed loop fits around the L-pak, its just for looks.


I had no idea how the hell to wire this thing up. Luckily there's a wiring diagram on the box, that half ass makes sense to me.



after getting everything installed.....what a mess


I was able to clean everything up a bit with some Tesa tape. I'm happy i was able to eliminate some of the wiring to the JL amp harness because there were 3 wires going into each of the terminals, it was a rats nest.
Its not perfect, but that'll do pig.


I secured the mount down with some velcro and had to disconnect the terminals to clear the seat adjuster bar, but got it all in there.

I'm very happy with how this guy works, i'm now able to control the volume of the dash tweeters independently of everything else.

 

Did you get an answer to your question? Im wondering the same thing.

 

Nice setup and build! Are you using all the factory speaker wiring?

 

Yessir. Didn't want to go down that route of running all new wires.
Factory wires are a little wimpy but work fine.

 

Hmm, well, drilling through the door harness to run new speaker wire to the rear doors was a pain when I did it in my old 2011 tundra. How many watts and at what ohm are you sending to the speakers?

 

My amp will push 50w rms to the doors at any ohm. My door speakers are 4ohm

 

anybody know if the factory speaker wiring can handle 100w rms? would save so much time to not have run new speaker wire!

 

Jesus thats a lot of power...you sure you are going to push that much?

For 100rms i would run new wires.

 

ya, that is what I thought. oh well, just means the install will take a little longer, but i will have the piece of mind that the wiring is sufficient. BTW, i was mistaken, the amp is rated for 75w rms, not 100w.

But is it really a lot of power? just a five channel amp feeding some 6 1/2" components. My understand of the flow of electricity stops there. I will not be playing at 100% volume so i guess the 75watts is only the theoretical power.

 

my amp gives 50w rms to the doors, and i have the gain up about 3/4 of the way. its enough to make your ears hurt when its up high.

 

So its been a while since i've touched the stereo in the tundra, but i've had a couple things sitting on the workbench taking up space, so i thought yesterday would be a good time to get some of them out of the way.

A while back Tech12Volt had a one-day group buy on some AudioFrog 6.5" components. I always heard such good things about them, so i jumped on them (i think it was around $250, which seemed like a steal). I jumped on them and finally got around to cracking them open.
Here's the C5-650 on the right and the AudioFrog G60S


The baskets on the JL's look nicer, but those are also over twice as expensive:


The frog's tweeters design are really interesting


One thing i didn't like about the C5's was that the tweeter was tiny! It was a real pain to install. I ditched the spring and these guys fit really nicely in the factory sail panels.


These are going to sound great on some sound deadened door panels.........to be continued

 

So i've been wanting to sound deaden the doors for a while now. I think the stereo sound amazing without it, but i'm not one to leave anything alone.
I had previously put a sheet of noico 80mil sound deadening on the outer skin behind the speaker, but i couldn't get more of this in time (Amazon shipping is slow thanks to corona), but....i did find that Kilmat would get here pretty fast, so i went with TWO big boxes


Here's how the door looks like. Its really important to take a good picture of the routing of the cables to make sure you can get everything back in its right spot. First thing to do is get rid of the plastic and the massive amount of adhesive. It was interesting that my passenger side had a TON of adhesive, the drivers side barely had any. Note how the door latch cables are held up at an upward angle.....this is important and i paid the price....more on that later



The first door went well. put 4 panels on the outer-skin easily and covered the inner-skin. I covered up the holes and put a sheet on the inside (sandwiched) of those holes so there wasn't a sticky backing just flopping around.



I was really happy with it....but i noticed that the green ended cable (the door latch one) wasn't holding itself up like the other......didn't think much of it, went ahead and buttoned everything up. Put the door panels back on and went in the cab, turned on the stereo to hear what the new speakers sound like and they sound very similar to the C5's but less sharp. I was liking how everything was going. I pull the door latch to hop out and start on the drivers side........OHH SHIT.......door latch doesn't work. I hop over the seat and get out through the drivers side. Luckily the outside door latch still works. I pull all the panels back off and end up finding that that cable with the green end has the same style connector at the other end that is yellow.


Yep, the damn connector popped out. This thing was a complete bitch to get back in. I ended up using a small pry bar with a curved end and my cellphone to see in there. I got it in after about an hour. I throw the panels back on and try the door handles....Nope, no go.
Getting to be a mixture of pissed and panicking. The door panel comes back off and i pop the yellow connector off, and the cable comes completely off.
I end up taking the tree torque bolts that hold the latch assembly to the door, and had a decent amount of room to see what i'm working with. I wish i would have done that from the start.


I got it buttoned up and the inside door latch works. I was ecstatic! Tested, the outside door latch, and the MFer doesn't work. Door panel comes back off, 3 torque bolts come out, and i put the bar that pushes down the latch assembly to release the door back in its location. Everything works great now. Thank god. This passenger door took about 3-4 hours. The drivers side door took about 45min. lol

 

Thanks for sharing, I am pulling off the passenger door panel today for the same reason. Now I know what to look for!

 

Awesome! Hit me up if you have any questions. it would have only taken 45min/door without the SNAFU.