What started out as a desire to get rear fill while driving sans top, ended up with the first stage of what might end up even more expensive.

I visited Mark to pick up some S-Pods and was uncertain what I wanted to put in them. I had thought I would end up with components of some sort, but as I thought it through and listened to a ton of speakers, I settled on a set of coaxial Focals (A-130).

The reasons for going with the coaxials were that they sounded good and I wanted to rotate the tweeter toward the door to take on some of the ambient wind noise that would otherwise get a head start on the sound as it left the tweeter. I realize that this theory is not necessarily supported by empirical info, but can we get any more subjective than sound quality? In addition, The Access Coaxials were a lot less expensive than the component Focals I had looked at.

However, the real kicker in this decision was putting in a set of Focal KP165s in place of the stock front speakers. As I drove around with the fronts in the doors and the coaxials still in the boxes in the trunk, I began to wonder if I really needed rear speakers. The KP165s were that good. At 75 mph, the sound volume and quality was very impressive; and that was running with the stock HU.

Still, I wanted to go ahead and do the rears for those times when I want to hear at less than high sound levels so I went home and installed the S-Pods and the coaxials. Mark points out on his web site that doing coaxials creates a problem if the tweeter protrudes more than 1/8" beyond the rest of the speaker (presumably the surround). In that case, he advises mounting the speakers on the inside of the mounting plate rather than simply assembling the S-Pod and then slipping the speaker in the hole and fastening it to the plate. He also points out that the main issue with this approach is trying to locate the nutserts with the bolts without being able to see what is going on (since the speaker is now taking up the hole that you would otherwise have been able to look into while assembling the S-Pod). I can attest to serious frustration in trying to get the S-Pods together with a rear mount coaxial.

Well, frustration can immobilize or it can motivate, so I wandered around my shop long enough to find eight pieces of heat shrink tubing (1/4") which I pressed onto the nutserts on the rear S-Pod plate. At that point, all it took was sticking the bolt through the hole and into the tubing and the bolt simply went straight to the nutsert, thereby saving time and allowing me to get some needed sleep before a long drive today.

Bottom line, the S-Pods are well worth the cost, the Focals (both sets) sound great and heat shrink tubing has many uses. I guess an amp is in order and, since the HU doesn't appear to have preouts, probably a new HU, too. But for now, I just going to enjoy the new and amazingly improved sound.

 

Hey Bob,
Thanks for posting this. I hope it didn't take too long to figure out the tubing trick. I'd have let you know about it if I knew you were going to go with coaxials...sorry.

 

Hi Mark...

I only spent a few minutes blindly trying to luck out with finding the holes before I started looking for a new approach. I had just used some shrink tubes for another project so the fix was easy to come up with.

Yep, I was totally decided on components when I picked up the S-Pods. Only after I fried my brain listening to everything under the sun did I come up with the notion that spending less on rear fill and more on replacing the fronts might work better for me. In addition, angling the Focal Access coaxial tweeters out toward the windows seems to have worked in helping overcome wind noise from the sides.

We took a trip to San Francisco and up and down the coast over the last two days. Sounds were great from Ricky Skaggs to Chris Ra to YoYo Ma and ZZ Top.

As an aside, any question I might have had about separation, soundstage, imaging and the like, given the location of a single channel behind my head, has been made what it really was in the first place; academic.

I guess if someone hooked up speakers in S-Pods with an intention of using them as the primary sound source at fairly high levels, they might well begin to detect some right/left channel issues. However, as rear fill, I am interested in improving my hearing of vocals and higher frequencies that are pretty much wiped out by wind noise under higher speed top down conditions and the S-Pods fill that bill quite nicely, thank you.

I highly recommend S-Pods.

...Bob

...Bob

 

have you amped your fronts yet? The Focals sing when amped.

no reason to amp the rears tho, especially with s-pods.

I have them and love 'em.

 

[QUOTE=Willie Gee,Sep 30 2005, 07:44 PM]have you amped your fronts yet?

 

I did things a bit differently.

I swapped out my headunit first. I've got an Alpine 9833. I ran stock speakers with the 9833 at first and noticed dramatic improvements in sound quality. I've got an 04, so the stock speakers aren't too terrible.

But then I updated my fronts to Focal KP165s and powered them with a Phoenix Gold 600Ti. I am from the school of thought that one should over power your speakers by 15-33%. This gives them ample headrooom, and you can turn your gains down a bit. You won't over work your amp this way. The Focals LOVE power, and will sound great when you put in a big clean amp. In fact you are damaging them by using your stock headunit to power them. It is much easier to destroy speakers by underpowering them, rather than overpowering them.

I wouldn't, however, run an amp with your stock headunit. It's worth the extra cabbage to purchase a new headunit. The stock headunit has a terrible signal that is designed to be run at low wattage with sensitive speakers. When you amp it, it throws the math off and your system will amplify a distorted signal making it sound worse, louder sure, but the clarity will be something awful.

As far as new headuntis are concerned, you don't need anything flashy, just get something with 4volt outs. The better Pioneers and Alpines all offer the 4 volt out, and you can find these headunits at many price points. Most of my drivign time is spent with the radio door closed, using Modifry's DCI. A fancy display will be like a broadway play that nobody came to see; an excercise in futility.

 

Thanks for the reply. I like the idea of feeding the Focals more power. I'm looking at a 4V Pioneer and one at 6.5 V. Not sure if the extra $$ for 5 more RMS and 2.5V is worth it. If I go straight to mounting an amp, the lower power unit might make more sense.