i have to say cab.....your goood! very ingenious

 

Thank you.

 

Actually i think all the followers of this post want to thank all of the contrivutors specially you and rye and the others for making something like this a possible alternative. Lets still see how we can innovate and come up with the best alternative to upgrading the sound system without really going full blast with a competition yet extremely heavy setup. Minimum weight, minimum expense, best compromise and if possible best sound. Ok the last one is a dream but hey dreaming is free.

 

I made a move for some 5.25" woofers. Bose sub budget upgrade to follow.

 

So guys, I've done a little digging into the Bose subwoofer. I bought a set of cheap Polk Audio 5.25" speakers to replace the stock Bose drivers. Reality is the Bose sub drivers seem pretty decent. They have pretty large voice coils and decent magnets. The Polk speakers had the same size magnets and smaller voice coils - swapping them in seemed like it would be a DOWN grade, so I aborted the swap. Similarly, the expensive JL Audio 5.25" drivers have smaller voice coils, for $320 I'm not sure they would be much of an upgrade either. I'm going to go with swapping out my 6.5" door speakers for 8" ones. Listed frequency range goes from 60hz to 40 hz, should be a noticeable improvement in bass of the whole system. I realize a couple of you have already made the choice for the 8's, I think that was the right call.

In some ways, I'm not sure why I'm intent on continuing to upgrade. In its current form, the system sounds VERY good. On rock, it gets REALLY loud. I think the 8's will take it up that final notch though. I'll be able to update and let you know the magnitude of the improvement when I get them in.

Pics of the inside of the Bose sub and a comparison with the Polk drivers I checked out. Also note the ODD sub driver polarities - the large spades are NEGATIVE.

 

Interesting!

So, looking at the label, the rear unit is actually a woofer and NOT a SUBWOOFER.

Thanks for the pics. Btw, I wonder if there's enough box volume and room to replace those 2 woofers with one Subwoofer!

 

Well, they are pretty much sub drivers, even though they are not that big.

 

So, to continue info sharing, I've triple checked the polarity of all the speakers. ALL of the speakers are negative on the striped wire, positive on the plain wire. The 8" door woofers are positive on the large spade, negative on the small spade. I'm confident my entire set is polarity correct. Difficult to verify the tweeters with a standard polarity test, but if the wires are consistent with the rear panel speakers and the door midranges, then they are also negative on the striped wire. Anxious to hear more results from others.

 

Why are you checking polarity? Do you doubt becuase you also feel the soinds is not good enough

 

No, just double checking. Had installed based on wire references from another thread, but had not checked myself. Now I have verified by polarity checking the stock speakers. Have your speakers yet?

 

Yes the speakers are here! But i forgot to get door clips. Read the diy for removing the panels and it said that it was inevitable that door clips would be broken on disassembly. 1 week the clips should be here. Excited to install.

 

Great. You shouldn't break any. Slow, even force to get the panels off.

 

I hope so. But better to have some on hand just in case. Our weather has this knack of making things brittle. When i get the time this weekend will already get the 3/4" mdf board and make the spacer with the hole for the 8" so i will just need to form the outside portion of the spacer when the door panel is removed. Maybe, i will also do the tweeter already as i heard that even just the tweeters provide marked improvements already and i dont have to destroy anything with the pcar, just the tweeter housing of the focals as cab suggested..i think it was rye who shared that tweeters upgrade already provided marked imporvments. Will report

 

Evhudsons reported on the tweeters and I found the same to be true. As a result, I knew I was on the right path.

 

Wow. Great write up!! Always nice to see others that appreciates "clean sounds"!!