Installed new dash speakers

I have a '17 Limited DC without JBL. The factory speakers left a lot to desire. My goal was to keep the factory HU and upgrade the speakers. The DC does not have tweeters in the sail panels, so my entire front soundstage consists of the 6x9s mid/wooders in the doors, the dash corner speakers, and the dash center speaker.

As a first step, I decided to buy dash speakers on the tech12volt group buy. They consisted of a pair of Kenwood X2C full-range speakers. The Kenwoods were a step up from the factory speakers, but I found the sound thin and not capable of carrying the mid and high frequency range required for my front sound stage. The build quality was also kind of weak. One of the mounting tabs was broken on arrival, and I broke a second one installing them. The tabs are thin plastic.

I spent weeks researching alternatives and settled on the Audiofrog GS25. They are full range speakers capable of a frequency range of 200-20K Hz. They are also fairly efficient at 87dB into 4ohms. They are made to fit the dash openings of Toyota, Mercedes, and some GM vehicles. There are 3 sets of steel mounting brackets installed - 2 of which are not needed and removed. They are marked Toyota, MB/Toyota, and GM. For my Tundra - the MB/Toyota tabs worked best.


Installation was simple. They fit perfectly with NO modifications required. Fit is tight - there is only about 1/16" clearance in depth - but they fit! Note the nifty isolation bushings included in the package (one above and one below the bracket)




Here is a comparison of the Audiofrog, Kenwood and the factory original:



Interestingly, the Audiofrog are advertised as a 2.5" speaker, but they are larger than both the Kenwood 2.75" and the factory 3"



How do they sound? Glorious! They are so smooth that they are almost transparent. I mean.... the sound field is broad and clear and difficult to pinpoint from where it comes from. Highs are crisp and clear, but not fatiguing. No additional tweeters are required. They are not cheap, but a big improvement over the Kenwoods. The factory 6x9 actually doesn't sound bad delegated to bass duty, but next step: Audiofrog GS690 6x9 in the door. I'll post a separate thread when those are installed.

 

I've got a set of audiofrog 6.5" components still in the box waiting for an install day.
Glad to see that there's a dash option from a high end builder

 

nice ! does the grille fit over them ?

 

yes, the grill fits perfectly - no different than with the factory speaker.

I wanted to do a writeup with an option for those of us that don't like sail panel tweeters. I find them too far-removed from the mid (sound not blended well) too in-your-face, and always off-axis. The windshield-reflected dash corner full range speakers are evenly dispersed and the sound field perfectly front and center.

Can't wait for my 6x9s. The low-frequency extension is 42hz with a free-air resonance of 58hz. They should do really well will mid/bass and shouldn't require a separate sub, which is difficult to fit in a DC

 

are they dedicated speakers or part of a component set ? did you just re-use oem toyota speaker harness ?

 

Dedicated speakers. They are wide-band full range so no crossover network required. Audiofrog recommends a 200hz 12dB HPF, but I'm running them off HU power, so won't be taxing them and didn't install one. Just look at the frequency chart! Very impressive:



I reused the speaker harness I got from James with the Kenwood speakers. He sells them separately as well. So....plug-n-play

 

Thanks for the writeup! Waiting on harnesses to install the Kenwoods but good to know there's an alternative. I will say the Audiofrogs are almost 4x more so I'm not surprised the sound better.

 

I have the exact set of Kenwoods they sound better than they look.

 

This weekend I am getting my old JL Audio 300/4 amp installed and Alpine Type R components for front and Kicker coaxials in the rear. I already upgraded the head unit with an Alpine ILX-W650. The subs/box/mono amp will have to wait a while, but I will be pretty content with the setup after this weekend.

 

That sounds like a great setup! Let us know how it turns out. I've been debating whether to change out my rear speakers for coaxials - they are for fill only. I rarely have rear passengers.

 

This is why I went with the Kicker coaxials for rear fill and nothing elaborate. It's for rear fill. I am curious how the system will sound because I had the same setup in my Tacoma before getting the Tundra, except the Tacoma I had a Pioneer DVD player in it with no high output RCAs like the 4V preouts that the Alpine has.
I used a Rockford Fosgate PS3 12" sub in a ported box that sat on top of the seat. With the Tundra, I plan on getting 2 shallow mount subs under the seats like the Kicker RT series in a box from Fox Audio. I will use the same Kicker 750.1 mono amp to push the 2 10s. I am interested how they will sound compared to a single 12 that is non shallow. I am hoping that they will be close.

 

I bet those sound awesome.

 

I am enjoying them immensely. While my system won't ever be a thumper, the sound quality is extremely pleasing.

 

I don't mean to bring a thread back from the dead, but can the dash speakers and the the rear tweeters be amplified? From some YouTube videos those speakers get their power from the HU and the door speakers get theirs from the stock amp under the passenger seat

 

These are individual component that do not have an included passive crossover. They are meant to be used with systems that have a dsp and active crossovers.

The GS25 are amazing spearkers and are great for 3 way active setup. You could run it off the factory harness, but you would need a way to limit the frequency that goes to the speakers. Some high end head units have this option (i think kenwood exceleron might).

If you dont want to go down the active setup, audiofrog sells the g60s that is a passive crossovers. You would be able to use the factory wiring and either put the 1" tweeter in the sail panel or in the dash corner (wiring would be a little more dificult, but not impossible).

 

You're correct in a non-JBL the dash corner, center, and rear tweeters get powered directly off the head unit. If you're keeping the factory speakers, amping them any further would risk blowing them, but you could theoretically splice into the factory wiring before the dash corners/center and the rear tweeters and amp them. Easier options imo would be if/when installing new dash corners, run new wiring from your amp directly to them which would be pretty easy, and for the rear tweeters, if replacing with a component set, you have 3 options, 1) buy a set with inline crossovers, use factory wiring for signal to woofer, inline crossover installs in door panel and runs right up to tweeter 2) get a set with separate crossovers and install them under seat or other location, run new wiring from crossovers to doors or 3) buy a a set with separate crossovers and install the crossovers in the doors and use the factory wiring for input to the crossovers.

 

I'm aiming to put the Alpine S2-S68C in the front and the S2-65C in the rear but with that 3.5 being in the dash I'm wondering will that HU be strong enough to drive them. The front & rear is 85wrms it seems like they'll be under-powered. I haven't decided on what HU I'm going to change to but I got my eyes on the Tesla unit

 

To clarify, do you mean the S2-S69C in front? The 6x9" woofer and 3" midrange with 3/4" integrated tweeter? The only S68 model I see is the coaxial 6x8". The factory speakers in my '21 non-JBL look like this:

and are wired like this:


The corners are 13w 6 ohm and the center is a dual voice coil 10w 8ohm each coil. Each corner is wired in parallel to the center which nets a 3.4 ohm impedance or something along those lines and 23w, so at 4 ohms roughly 20w, which tracks about perfectly for what you'll see as far as nearly all in-radio amps I've seen which are also around 20 watts at 4 ohms.

On the S2-69C's it looks like the in-line crossovers are mounted to the speaker basket like the factory speakers. On the factory dash corner above (top speaker) inside the black heat shrink over the 4 wires, the positives and negatives are actually just soldered together and heat shrinked themselves.

If you replace the dash corners and power them directly off a head unit, you'd have to be careful about how you wire things. If you put 4-ohm replacements in the dash corners and leave the center speaker in place, you'll have 4 ohms + 8 ohms wired in parallel which nets 2.67 ohms and could damage your head unit.


If you ditch the center, your head unit will likely supply around 20 watts to each of the 4 ohm corner replacements, likely underpowering them like you said. Since you're planning to do components in the rear, easy option would be to use factory wiring from your amp to rear woofer, and then rather than using the factory rear tweeter wiring that goes to the head unit, wire your new tweeter directly to your new woofer as intended, which then frees up the 2 rear tweeter channels on your head unit. You could essentially have head unit to dash corners, and then loop the signal so the dash corners aren't wired to the center and use the rear tweeter channels for the center, only problem is then you've got 2 x 20w going to a dual voice coil center that if you wired in parallel to itself would be 2 x 10w, effectively overdriving it x2. You could get something like the tech12volts center speaker or make a bracket yourself and install a couple tweeters for a new center, only problem there is then you're center speaker would be balanced/faded to the rear.

All in all, what I would do is install the front woofers using factory wiring as input, and run new wiring from the woofers in the door, through the door grommets up to the new dash corner speakers and remove the center channel. See how it sounds and if you miss the center channel, upgrade it and loop the factory wiring in the dash to power it off the head unit. In the rear, install the new woofers using factory wiring for input, and then run a new ~18" wire from the woofer up to the tweeter.

TrailGridPro has Alpine speaker bundles in 6, 8 and 10 speaker set ups. If you were to grab a pair of JBL equipped sail panels or cut holes in yours you've then got 2 more speaker locations to play with.

 

Yes the 6x9" woofer and 3" midrange with 3/4" integrated tweeter is the one I'm referring to and I did change the center speaker to JL Audio tweeters I got from tech12volts