Lets see your custom front speaker setups. Enclosures, jigsaw holes, whatever I bought some high end 6.5" Alpine woofers and tweeters. The 4x6 front mounts are obviously way too small. The doors have these massive windows that come down too far. The kickpanels seem like a lot of work and... I can't think of any other spots. If anyone has made figured out a way to mount soem 6.5" components in the front of their car... post some images I just finsihed up mounting my subs. Here is a pic to start off the thread.

 

Check out how this guy did it. Looks great in my opinion and I have worked with fiberglass and it's not very difficult.

http://www.cardomain.com/memberpage/108770/1

 

Looks cool. Someone replied to my classified ad, so I might be getting some used enclosures through him in not too long. That fibreglass work looks like a lot of fun though. Maybe I'll need to try that out later on down the road.

 

I've had speakers just about everywhere you can fit them in a thirdgen. So far my favorite (by a large margin) is the kickpanels.

Doors don't image very well, plus as you mentioned, you have to build them out a mile if you have power windows, which in my opinion looks tacky. The main advantage is that most car speakers are designed to work in an infinite baffle condition, and your door is about the best location for that type of driver.

The dash can't fit very much, won't allow good midbass even if you use larger drivers, and can sound harsh because of glass reflections. I was never fond of the imaging... it was closed in and impossible to get a good soundstage for both front seats.

The kick panels have given me imaging that's far better than I ever expected to get from a car. The soundstage is high, wide, and placement is accurate. All that mumbo jumbo about firing your speakers into your feet is from people who haven't actually done it. Feet can block the sound a bit, but it's still far better than any other location I've used. The main drawback I've found is that midbass gets very bloated because the drivers wind up in such a tiny airspace. I'm going to combat this with an eq.

 

Did you build those moulds yourself and cover them with carpet or are th ose the universal Q-forms I might be getting shortly?

 

Mumbo Jumbo? How can a tweeter's sound not be affected by a leg or foot blocking it? I know when I had q-forms and a passanger, good bye highs from that side. It was like putting a hand over a tweet. Very noticable. Tweeter placement is what makes or breaks a system. Your kicks have the tweet in a different spot then the qforms, so maybe its less likely to get blocked.

 

You're right. My tweets are nowhere close to where q-forms puts them. My passenger tweet is above the woofer, which provides good sound even when somebody's leg is in front of it. It still blocks some of it, but blocked or not, it sounds better than any other speaker location I've used. I'm willing to sacrifice some highs in those rare occasions that I have a passenger, instead of sacrificing good imaging all of the time.

 

Have you ever tried tweeters in the a-pillars? I've heard some nice ones in other than 3rd gens. I don't think anyone has tried it in a 3rd gen yet.

 

I haven't tried it in my thirdgens, but I've heard a couple cars with them. So far I haven't heard any that impressed me. The closer tweeter has always been overpowering.

I may experiment with some tweeters in my IROC just for educational purposes though. I'm going to borrow some ribbon tweeters with a very directional dispersion pattern and fool around with reflecting them off the windshield. At the same time, I may also tinker with some conventional domes running high pass at very high frequencies (6k or higher) and attenuated quite a bit. I want to see what I can do to raise my soundstage without having a negative impact on imaging. If I get around to this, I'll run the tweeters at more conventional x-over frequencies & levels so that I can give some thirdgen-specific feedback on tweeter placement.

 

I put some tweeters in my a pillars and mounted them as flush as I could and I think they sound great. They aren't overpowering my any means and they aren't THAT noticable.

 

of course they do.

 

i've got 3-way components (which will probably get replaced soon) and i've got the 1" and 3" in kickpanel enclosures. the 6 1/2" is in the door, but it is not quite as important due to them being used for midbass. if i could do it again, for ease of install and imaging, i'd go to a 2-way setup with both drivers in the kicks.