I finally gave in to the pressures of practicality and bought a primula estate last week, in replacement for the passat. General impressions are good; it's vastly better than the VW to fling about the countryside, and the 2.0 engine, whilst initially feeling a bit gutless, responds well to revs and makes the car fun to take by the scruff of the neck.
The only significant problem is that the standard fit speakers are
*awful*, so I thought I'd ask on here for advice. I'd like to stick to units which fit in the original mounts - no subs taking up half the boot space, for example. I haven't taken the grilles off yet, but looking at their sizes, I reckon it has 13cms at the front and 16s at the back, with tweeter units at the top of the side pillars.
The headunit which is in at the minute is some cheapo Clarion thing. I have no objection to replacing that, but my total max budget is probably under £300.
Anyway, general advice and suggestions for places to look for kit much appreciated.
I have one of these bought from this guy in the Vee -
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The iso doesn't have a connector block on the car-end tho, but I'm sure a electronics skilled guy like yourself could sort that heh. I just paid a man a tenner to put one on for me. It's a great unit for the cash.
I also have one of these under the passenger seat -
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Which is very impressive for it's size - comes complete with a wiring kit and the lot.
I haven't done the speakers yet - cos I found the headunit improved sound quality loads so it's not as pressing anymore.
The 6.5" were just the right size to fit in the parcel shelf under the OEM grilles, in the existing holes so that was nice and stealthy. I screwed the crossovers to the bottom of the shelf as they weigh nothing, which let me retain the screw connector; the 306 parcel shelf has some handy trunking to hide the wire away so it made a nice tidy install. I mounted the tweeters high up in the rear, as you do.
Sound quality with my Sony head unit is pretty decent, big improvement over the OEM piddling things.
They were about £50 from Halfords IIRC, so probably £40 elsewhere lol
You know, I've discovered a bit of a problem with that; the BT2500 has th mic built into the head unit which is fine, unless the fascia you've got the head unit in rattles a bit. Mine does, with age I guess and the mic picks it up superbly :)
Nice headunit (got one in my FD RX-7 after getting fed up with the Alpine). Can be a bit problematic (some reports of CD drive problems) but superb sound quality.
Really need a decent amp and speakers, though. Oh, and mine only cost me a hundred quid :)
Not a big fan of the Pioneers, TBH. Which reminds me, I need to get off my arse and dremel out the speaker mounts on the RX-7 so they take the 'proper' speakers intended for the car.
Take the grilles off first, otherwise you'll end up buying stuff that won't fit. DAMHIKIJK, OK?
First, if you want to read far too much about car audio, have a wander over to
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and check out the forums. The short version of the advice - depending on how many people you'll normally transport in the car, forget about rear speakers. They mess up the sound stage and make the system harder to set up unless you really know what you're doing. And then you're talking audio processors that cost more than your whole budget so you can time-align the whole thing.
Best setup would be a set of decent to very decent speakers in the front doors - if you want to make use of the mounting locations for the tweeters, you'd have to buy components which would make the whole thing a tad more expensive[1] so you may want to forget about those and get a decent set of 2-way integrated speakers.
Complement the whole thing with a small sub because anything fitted into door while not be able to play really deep[2] so unless you want your music to sound like the bass player is taking an extended holiday, you _need_ a sub. For basic use, a powered sub as mentioned elsewhere in this thread should do the job (I've got one in the convertible, it's OK but not great). Ideally get a small sub (6"-8") that works well in a small enclosure and build yourself one. It's not hard - plenty of examples on Talkaudio.
Go used. Seriously. 300 quid is either going to buy you a load of tat at Halfrauds or some seriously nice kit second-hand.
I'd check if the H/U has pre-outs - if it does and you want a decent sound for the money, get a reasonably good cheapish amp (JBL GTO 75.4 are mentioned fairly frequently on TA), Some decent speakers for the front and a small sub for the back. Bridge the two rear channels on the amp to feed the sub, use the front channels as intended. Oh, and make sure that you feed the rear channels from the sub out if the H/U has one. If you buy used, the lot above should set you back around 200 quid or less and it /will/ sound a lot better than a stock system if you can be bothered to mess about a little to build the enclosure for the sub.
[1] Components have better crossovers - most 2-way only use a condensor to prevent the tweeter from getting hammered by the lower frequencies and play the mid/bass full range - but are generally slightly less efficient. To make them sound _proper_, you'd want at least a small amp for them, otherwise you could just flush the money down the toilet.
[2] You can get door speakers to play really deep if you know what you're doing. You basically have to seal the door (usually done with sound deadening mats) but it's a pain in the arse if you need to get at the window winder mechanism or the door locks afterwards. That said, you still need fairly large speakers (I wouldn't attempt it with anything smaller than 17cm) and unless you actually put small subs in the doors, it'll be a compromise.
Funnily enough, the cheapy Goodmans one I had did too, but that unit kept overheating and cutting out and was just generally shit. TBH I only really use the phone in the car to answer quick calls and not have long conversations so it does the job. And the audio quality is dead good so that more than makes up for it.
I've had no issues with mine, I don't know it that is luck or whatever. It's been faultless.
I've got some German made amp which I got from a friend who builds Sound Off cars. Rather good too. Don't know what it's called, I shall have a look sometime, it's firing through an Alpine something or other sub I've had for years.
Neither am I, but I was bored on a Sunday afternoon, the front speakers were the original 20 yr old jobs and I was near Halfrauds. They had the best spec for the money so I bought 'em. Only takes 2 mins to put front speakers in a Rangie so I fitted 'em in the car park.
You wouldn't happen to have an amp lying around would you? I'm tempted to be a pikey and fit Jag speakers to my golf but they're 6 ohm so I need a bit of power... I've got actual cash and everything.
Found some 6.5" pioneer units I got from Dan years ago, sat on a shelf gathering dust, so they've gone in the front doors, after a small amount of filing to clear the mounting screws. This has helped things quite a lot. The cheapo clarion headunit still sucks donkey bits, so I reckon I'll try bunging an old JVC unit I have sat around in and see if that helps. I am watching a nak CD400 on ebay at the minute, and am thinking about getting an under-seat sub of the general type suggested by Dan.
I took the grilles off and discovered that they were indeed 6.5" things. Still need to have a look at the rears..
It's no biggy for me to knock up simple micro-based delay lines for alignment, if I were bothered, but I really just want to go from 'complete crap' to 'not too annoying'. Stereo imaging isn't hugely important to me whilst driving, and general background levels are such that I can't really see the point in spending huge amounts on uber low noise kit.
Right you are. I'll get me onto the ebay and see what I can spy.
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