A little help with tweeter placement please

Just installed a sony HU - 20-25 watts rms. Have an 07 non jbl, so no amp. Am looking at some inexpensive rockford component speakers. Am not an audiophile by any means but still would like the best sound possible. Not sure where to put the tweeters. Pretty easy to put them in the dash corners where those 3” speakers are. I could also cut a hole in the sail panel and put them there, like on my tacoma. I have no center speaker, but the dash has the cavity and cover. Would be easy to mount both tweeters there and maybe even aim them a bit.

have done some research but haven’t found much that compares sq in one location vs another. The speakers have a 92 db efficiency and rated at 2-40 watts, so hoping the 20 watt hu is adequate to produce decent sq. I do not listen to loud music and never turn the stock unit loud enough to create any distortion. Not after loud and powerful, just decent sq.

thanks for your advice.

 

I’d say another thing to consider if you're doing component speakers is whether they have in-line or separate crossovers. If they have inline crossovers you'll use factory wiring to from radio to woofer, and then inline crossovers/tweeter will wire onto the woofer like this:


This makes it easier to install the tweeters in the sail panels because you don't have to run any wiring through the door grommet, which isn't too terribly difficult with the right tools. Looking at the Punch/Prime sets of Rockford components and they have inline/integrated crossovers either on the woofer or tweeter.


If you get components with separate crossovers you have to consider where to mount the crossovers, and run wiring from the crossover to the tweeter. For example, if you mount the crossovers in your doors near the woofer and your tweeters in the sail panels, then it's essentially the same plan as above. If you wanted to do tweeters in the dash corners, then it would probably make more sense to mount the crossovers under a seat or in the dash, and then your signal would go radio>factory wiring for door output on radio>crossover>factory wiring to door and new wiring from crossover to dash corner.

As far as location, mounting them in the sail panels will play across the dash, or if you can angle them you can get them more on axis/pointed at your driver and passenger seat. If you mount them in the dash corners, they should get some dispersion across the windshield.

I would do this: get some speakers (assuming either the Rockford Prime or Punch series components, both have inline crossovers), install the woofers in your doors and pull off your sail panels. Put a small piece of velcro on back of the tweeter and the door metal behind the sail panel, "mount" the tweeter there temporarily with the velcro, gently shut your doors and give it a listen. After that, see if the tweeter wires will reach to move them from the sail panel to the dash corners, may need to make a little speaker wire extension to do this. Give them a listen in the dash corners playing up at the windshield to test the dispersion and see which you prefer. If you decide to mount in the sail panels, either cut yours, get a second pair to cut, or get the JBL tundra sail panels (which I believe are the same for 2007-2021 but I might be wrong). Extra sail panels are about $20 per side when I ordered them. If you like them better in the dash corners, there should be cheap tweeter mounts to install them in that location for maybe $10 per side. A wire coat hanger or a really big zip tie make a good wire fish to pull the tweeter wires through the door grommets.

Best of luck!

 

Hi I originally had my JL audio tweeters on my dash corners. I moved them though to sides of my seats up near the headliner. Wow what a difference that made. The tweeters are much more noticeable because they tilt down toward your ears. I can take a picture tomorrow and show you how I did mine

 

Thanks for the input! The rockfords I am considering have a x over in line on the tweeter wire, at least that is what their manual says. The 07 wiring goes from the HU to the dash tweeter hits that speakers cross over, then back out and to the door speaker. Therefore I can cut up that speaker and bridge the in, the out, and the new tweeter together, making that a fairly easy install. crutchfield will also give the little mounts for that area as well. Sail panel would be easy as well. Just not really an easy way to test both locations. I suppose I could just use an old lamp cord for testing, but I need to do the bridging at thte old tweeter first.

 

Here are pictures of my tweeters

 

Fellows the jbl oem sail panel are the best way to get your high end right. Believe it or not if you use a tweet that will fit in the oem tweeter bracket in the sail panel it will aim the tweets and you will get a fantastic sound stage. They are aimed slightly up and across the dash. If you cut the sails and put a bigger tweet in there they will be aimed down and away from the dash.

the oem sails are an easy way to get things installed stealthy and aimed nicely. Just have to use a 3/4 tweet. A 1 inch may work as well just have to see but the key is using the oem tweeter bracket. This will aim the tweet for you.

I went through 4 pairs of jbl sail panels trying different tweets and trying to aim them but then realized the oem is way better and no hassle or cutting required.

 

Thanks for all of the input. I have a non jbl system, but it sounds like it is worth a few bucks to buy the jbl sails. Still may follow the first suggestion and try a fe different locations to notice the difference.

 

It really is. however
You can put tweets in the dash corners and they will be great BUT you have to have a dsp to make it so. They have to be eq’d separately and individually and you have to have the ability to adjust each tweet individually to level match them as well.

but with the sail panels this is not that important to sound really good.

 

Thanks for that. I have a simple axv-av1000. It has an eq, but not so good at playing with it. No dsp. Probably will just go get the jbl sails. I am not an audiophile, just want the best i can get. While i love experimenting with stuff I don’t thinks I would be good at picking up nuances from different locations. Prefer to get input from those that have an ear for it. We all have different skills. I can fix almost anything mechanical and a pretty good fabricaor, But ask me to draw a picture or pick matching colors for dressing and you would think my iq is single digits.

 

My bad I forgot the double cabs have different wiring than crewmaxes. One thing I was just thinking about is that depending on how the in-line crossovers are on the Rockfords, if your signal goes Head Unit>Tweeter>Woofer, the in-line crossover might cut the lows from your woofer and tweeter both, since typically signal goes Head Unit/Amp>Woofer>Tweeter for in-line crossovers. The JBL sail panels are cheap and easy to install (3 clips hold the sail panels on if I remember correctly), but I'd still test the tweeters in the 2 locations if you have the time. The difference should be fairly noticeable to the average listeners ear, and depending on the tweeters (some are better on axis pointed right at you whereas others can be off axis) it might sound better with them in the dash corners. Not sure how much truth there is to it, but I've heard of people in high end car audio going so far as to remove the vehicles windshield to cut holes/install speakers in the dash corners for the windshield dispersion effect and corner loading.

At the end of the day, both locations will probably sound great and be a big improvement!

 

Thanks for the follow up. I was aware of the wiring and know that I need to do some splicing at the dash speaker harness. It seems that downstream of the connector they bridge the input (from HU) and output (to woofer) and then send a third leg off that bridge to the capacitor and tweeter. I should have no issue getting clean signals to both locations. Am pretty good with electrical.

with an inline cross over on the tweeter (rockford setup) I don't really need to go from the woofer, do I? It would seem that the tweeter can be spliced anywhere on the main speaker feed. That would not be the case with a real cross over, but should work on an inline setup, correct? THis is how the oem system is setup and it also just uses a cap on the tweeter.

 

In case you didn't have it already the full wiring diagram looks like this:

Looking at some info on Crutchfield and it appears as though the dash corner to door woofer is wired the same way as the dash corner to center speaker on newer crewmaxes, i.e. signal goes from head unit to dash corner, positives and negatives are joined and sent onto the center so that the dash corner + center are wired in parallel. It looks like in your 07 DC the connectors are the same and I'd guess the dash corner and woofer are both ~8 ohm wired in parallel to present a 4 ohm load to the head unit. So long as you wire it the same way as factory and the speakers you've got have a cap on the tweeter itself or the wire, you should be good. Separate crossovers or crossovers on the woofer basket like the Rockford Punch speakers would be another story. For reference, I think it should look like this:


Signal comes in from the head unit, where the "X" is under the heat shrink the wires are soldered together so that the full range signal goes from head unit to tweeter and signal gets cut by the cap, and then signal is looped at the x prior to the cap so that the woofer still gets a full range signal. With the Rockford Prime's you should be able to recreate this with some splicing and be good to go.

 

I have also found this to be to the case. OEM sail panels retrofitted with your tweeter of choice produces the smoothest in car response, and is just about the simplest setup if you place the crossover in the door. I would bypass the factory wiring even if running off the head unit so that the 3” dash speakers are bypassed. There is a plug in the footwell that’s can be unplugged and tapped to push signal through the door grommet without back feeding to the head unit.

The dash location will work for the tweeter, but is sub-optimal without pulling down half of the of the tweeter response. The windshield creates some reflections (which is intentional in the factory system, as best I can tell) but doesn’t play nice with a tweeter that has a decent frequency response.

I’ve run both with the exact same components, as well as different components, and much prefer the door sail location in every instance.

 

Thanks for the advice. I believe you are correct on the splice under the heat shrink. I will just de-solder one of the wires on the tweeter itself to disable it and make it possible to go back. Also need the connector engaged to feed the door.

you guys have convinced me to just go with the sail panel. Blenton, did you modify the stock panel or did you use the jbl sail? Still wondering if i can modify what i have vs buying new panels.

 

This is interesting. So the primes say they are 4 ohm, but the woofer and tweeter must be wired in parallel to use an inline cross over. Does that mean they are really 8 ohm speakers that become 4 ohm when connected? Or do they become 2 ohm speakers once installed?I have never installed speakers with inline cross overs before.

 

I was able to aim one set of tweeters using the JBL sail; another set I had to cut the non-JBL sail due to the larger tweeter. Most component kits come with some trim rings that allow you to mount the tweeter either way and cover up the rough edges from drilling it out. I purchased a hole saw that was approximately the correct size, then did some fit up. A Dremel, file, sandpaper, etc would work.

 

Was the sound quality the same on all or did you find the one aimed vs the jbl sail to sound better?

 

I was able to aim both setups to around the same spot - inside ear of opposite seat: driver side tweeter aimed at left ear of passenger, passenger tweeter aimed at right ear of driver, or thereabouts. As noted by @Iamsecond the JBL sail won't fit larger format tweeters, so I modified a non-JBL sail panel to fit the larger format tweeter.

 

If you surface mount a larger tweeter in the non-JBL panels they'll end up something like this:


The JBL sail panels have a built in grille and a little bracket on the back that I believe is the same size as the rear door tweeters. In my rear doors I was able to barely squeeze in Focal tweeters that are listed as 13/16" and the mechanical drawing has a width of 40mm, your Rockfords look to be listed as 1/2" but with the surround/trim have a width of 46.4mm. Looks like the Rockford's also have angled surface mount tweeter housings. If you get the JBL sails and the tweeter's don't fit behind the grills, you can cut them out with and dremel the opening to your desired width. This is how my front tweeters started (can see the little tweeter brackets):



and then I did the bodyfiller/texture paint to finish to fill in the gap of the tweeter trim overhang that's hard to see in the pics:

 

I’ve always preferred tweets in the sails.

If you put tweeters in the dash corners you will get reflection off the windshield, and this is not necessarily a bad thing if you have active crossovers (to manually adjust xover gain and frequency cutoff points) and the ability to time align.

I had Hertz Mille tweets in the corners with an arc audio active crossover where I could tame the gain for the reflection. I also had the time alignment set up so they weren’t hitting so hard immediately and it made a big difference. It was actually one of my best sounding setups.

 

Thanks again for all or the great input. Changed gears today and ordered some jbl gto609c’s. Only $40 more and from the reviews seems like a much better setup. Even has traditional cross overs. A nice bonus is that it includes a surface mount swivel setup. Therefore I should be able to cut a hole in the stock sail panel and still get the tweeters pointed as recommended by blenton above. Will have to see if i have enough depth behind the panel to make it work, but it looks like it will fit.

 

Nice craftsmanship there. Having painted several cars, i know it is not easy to get clean, smooth lines with filler.

 

I’ve installed a few of those JBL comps for friends/neighbor kids. IIRC, the tweeter is fairly compact and shouldn’t give you any fits.