I had to take out the Rock-Fos 4 inch rounds the last idiot owner put into my dash. Between the big magnet and the tweeter dome, the speaker is just too deep for the available space, and bulged out thru my dash pad, cracking the ribs on the speaker hole.

I picked up a pair of Pioneer 4 X 6's, and they fit great, but they are really deficient when it comes to the bass. Thankfully, the speakers he put in the sail panel spaces are awesome, I get more than enough bass from there. Also found another dash pad (phew).

Question: What capacity bass blockers should I be using? I think the highest frequency I was able to find was 250hz. I have a feeling that might not be high enough---seems like 400-500hz might still make the Pioneers break up. Do they make 1000hz blockers---and where to find them----do you think that's too high?? Who's been here before??---and what did you do??

Thanks!!

 

250 should be high enough. Any higher and you're going to wind up cutting out too much midrange. I run my fronts around 150-up and they don't break up. Since I'm guessing that you're running deck power (otherwise you wouldn't be using bass blockers), you're not going to overpower those speakers if you run 250-up.

 

Save yourself some money. Go to Radio Shack and buy a capacitor with the appropriate value.

 

I cant quite remember what capacitors look like. Can you just solder the speaker wire to it and then it to the speaker?

Brian

 

They should be able to help you if you tell/show them what you want.

This is what they look like.



Click on that pic, and it'll take you to the description. That's a 100uF, so that would put your cut-off frequency right at 400Hz on a 4 ohm speaker.

And yes, you do solder them INLINE in the positive lead to the speaker.

 

It doesn't matter whether you do it on the positive or negative line (remember, this is an alternating current being fed to the speakers), but most people tend to follow convention and keep it on the positive terminal.

 

Can you wire them up in series. I was thinking for some 2 way 6x9's you could put a capacitor in line to the tweeter, and one inline to the woofer, the only problem with this is it would put the capacitor in series since mine are connected through one terminal. (well one + and one - )

but since they add by recipical 1/c = 1/c1+1/c2...

say if you wanted 130 on the woofer and 400 on the tweeter, you would need a 600uF woofer and a 200uf tweeter, right. for 2 ohm anyways, just an example

 

Thanks to all for their input. I picked up a couple of capacitors at RS. The selection was real thin, I got a 100 mF and a 47mF. They really cut the bass down.

Now-----if I put the two in series, does that give me 147mF value, and what frequency range would that block? Would it be roughly the average of the frequency blocked by the 100 and that of the 50mF?

Somehow I'm thinking I am oversimplifying this. I just realized that the LOWER value capacitor is a more "effective" bass blocker, so to me it looks like the more capacitance I put on the circuit, the less "bass blocking" I'm going to get.

Can I hear me now???? LOL

 

Speakers are in. Once again, thanks to all.

In case anyone's thinking of doing this, I tried something I thought was pretty cool. I had bought an assortment of pairs of caps, 100, 47, and 22mF, at Radio Shack. Good thing I did, because I thought my speakers were 8 ohm, turns out they're 4 ohms. Caps cost between .69 and .99 each.

Anyway, with a pair of cheapie alligator-clip jumper wires, I ran them like this:



/----22mF---A
/
(+)Spkr<clip-----clip---47mF---B clip"X"---clip----Positive output
\
\--100mF---C



(-)Spkr ---------------------------------------------------Negative output


Yeah, my drawing stinks, but: One jumper clipped to the speaker positive terminal, the other end is clipped to one end of all three caps, leaving three cap leads (A, B, and C) loose. The other jumper is clipped to the output from the stereo. Obviously the negative lead from the stereo can go straight to the appropriate speaker terminal.

With the balance and fade settings isolating your speaker, you can choose which cap does the best job for you just by moving
clip"X" back and forth between the loose cap leads "A" "B" or "C".

I took this extra step because I wanted to make sure I didn't need to change out the caps after I put everything together.

Turns out the 47 sounded the best to me, this works out to, I think, 800hz on a 4 ohm speaker. (thanks again). The compact 4X6's really suck for bass, good thing the rears kick butt and bass is non-directional!!! Also the speakers fit like they grew there.

Finally, I could put my new, crack free dash pad back on!!!!

Now all I gotta do is tighten a few rattles inside the drivers door, and I can put the door panel back on and go for a ride.

Once again, sorry for the long post and lousy art. It's late, best I could do.

 

Stupid HTML coding or whatever.

My lousy drawing was rendered illegible anyway.

If anybody wants to know how to hook up a bunch of capacitors the easy way to choose a value, let me know. We'll figure something out.




PS: AJ92RS---thanks to you in particular for the table. Took the mystery out.

 

if you connected the caps in series, the value went DOWN. the value only goes up when parralleled. resistors are the opposite- series= up, parrallel= down.