She's an old, '73 F-100, and about the only place where I can find room to mount speakers is in the original door holes. So I put some good 6 1/2" three ways in the holes. When parked with the engine off, they sound pretty good, but running and driving, the sound is poor.

There's only about 1 1/2" of room under the bench seat, so that's out, and anything I might mount above the rear window will be hitting me in the head a lot. I just want some good speakers, not the sub boomers. What have you all used and where did you mount them? Thanks

 

i might have a simple solution for u, have u thought about using an amp for those speakers in the doors? if u have an aftermarket CD player ur only getting 10-15w constant power to them and not reaching the full potiental. now depending on what speakers u have u should match the RMS of them with a good amp with the same RMS rating, even give or take 5-10w is ok. adding more speakers wont always help sound, in fact it usually harms it by clashing. anyway u might wanna try a set of 6x9"s in boxes behind ur seat, also try to use an amp for them. a good 4 channel amp will be fine. i wont sit here and recommend brands of speakers and amps cuz i dont know how much u wanna spend and ur best bet is to go out and lissen to some in stores like ciruir city, best buy, tweeter and even ur local audio shops.

 

Hey Polkat,

I'm in about the same situation---just installed a new
Jensen CD / MP3 player in my '79 F150 ( 45w / ch. ). Kinda
stewing over what to do about speakers. Installing deck
itself was a chore---modified existing bracket and used rivets
and J-B weld to solidly attach mounting sleeve. Oh boy...
Previous owner left those carpeted speaker enclosures behind
seat, but they sound muffled since sound goes into the back
of seats. thinking about installed 4" round speakers in the tops
of these boxes, but not sure yet... Thinking of small speakers
under dash, also. Will let you know how it turns out if you want.
It may be a while... If you have any success, let me know.

J.R.

 

The problem with two or three way 6 1/2 speakers in the doors is that I'm never happy with the bass response, especially when the truck is booming along. My amp is strong but this size speaker seldom stands up to their advertised rms.

I agree that speakers behind the seat is a bummer. The seat itself tends to filter out most of the treble, and I'm not into the huge sub woofer sound. It's been suggested that I put the speakers under the seat, apparently by someone who doesn't know that these old trucks only have about 2" of space down there!

I'm also a standard 6' guy, and mounting anything overhead is out. So I guess I'm stuck trying to enlarge the original door holes for something a bit bigger.

Anybody else have an idea? Thanks.

 

well, standard speakers arent meant to offer much bass, especially normal door sizes...just doesnt happen. might wanna try a set of component speakers with a seperate mid-bass driver and tweeter.

 

if your ok with spending a bit of money any componet 6X9 will help trmendously. the pioneers are do really good. first of youll need to enlarge the hole. then make a gasket to go behind it (cardbourd does great) then when your ready to install the new speaker just do a check ove. like make sure your wether trim is good. i believe that the best matieral for the cone would be heavy duty paper that is elaminated or polpropalyne. the paper will have the deeper sond though. even at 17 watts rms a descent set of six bys can pass for a set of eights and have the deeper response you want. your current speakers just cant move enough air though.

 

Absolutely..
The problem is really something that you know already... they don't produce enough bass on their own.

And it's not quite right to say that the speakers can't handle their intended RMS rating... they definitely CAN...
It's just that they CAN'T at certain frequencies, notably bass frequencies below a certain point. And that makes perfect sense, you will not avoid this with any size full-range speaker (6.5" is very adequate!):

There's physical (mechanical!) reasons for this:
The lower you go on the frequency scale, the greater the excursion required to reproduce those frequencies to an equivalent dB level.

If you run those speakers full-range, and turn up the volume, you will find that they start sounding aweful... distorting particularly on bassier content.

The solution is simply to block the bass going to those front speakers, probably somewhere around 100Hz and down.
Very likely, if you are running those speakers off an amp, there is a built in crossover on the amp.. just set it to "high pass" (blocks bass, allows highs only to pass), and set it around 100Hz.

I think you will be amazed at this alone... you will be able to crank your speakers to levels previously unreachable.

But there's a problem here... you just wiped out everything below 100Hz!

This is the reason that audiophiles - not just boomers - run subwoofers in their cars/trucks.
They serve a legitimate function.

And in a truck, you don't need much though, fortunately. A single 10" or 8" even will provide plenty of bass for you, based on your description of what you like out of your music.

Infinity makes a "basslink".. it's a self-powered 10" subwoofer with a passive radiator in a tiny enclosure. I think you should hunt one of these down, this would do the trick...
It's even gotten rave reviews on car audio enthusiast forums, so it's a capable little guy!

One of those, and your crossover being set to "high pass" on your amp, and your system will have more life, more extension, better sound quality, and definitely less distortion than you can even imagine currently.
Pretty simple too!

Good luck with this...

 

Once again, geolemon and Optikal are spot on. The reason your speakers sound better when the truck is not in motion is the bass response, and road noise. Once your truck is moving, the road noise level forces you to turn up your stereo to compensate. However, the sound reproduction does not get better as you turn up the volume, it gets worse. This can be solved in several ways.

The first option is as Optikal stated, to boost the power going to your speakers. More power= more clean output, upto the limit of the speakers. Your speakers need more power to reproduce low fequency music.

The second option is to sound deaden your vehicle. To really lower the noise floor in your vehicle, you need to apply a sound deadening material over the doors, floor and sometimes firewall and roof. ( Dynamat, B-Quiet, Cascade Audio all manufacture good materials for this) Not only does this make your vehicle cabin quieter inside, but your music will sound more dynamic.

The third option is to use more efficient speakers. A speaker with a higher db sensitivity than your curent speakers, will play louder with the same amount of applied power.

Hope this helps !

Steve W