We put 3 Infinity Kappa 32.7 coaxial speakers in greenie99's new coupe yesterday, 1 each in the door trim panels and 1 in the dash. It's a very straight forward installation as once you pull the plastic trim ring off the Infinity speaker they mount directly to the stock locations. Here's a shot of removing the Bose 3.5 from the panel:
We were able to tuck the small Infinity crossovers onto the door panels using double-sided foam tape. For the dash crossover we removed the board from the plastic housing and wrapped the solder points in electrical tape. There's not a ton of space for the dash crossover without blocking the defroster vent so taking the crossover out of it's housing allowed us to bury it inboard of the speaker. This speaker just barely fits in terms of height. The phase plug of the tweet is nearly pressed against the plastic grill, but it does all fit and it all goes back together neatly.
Now for the very subjective part.....
Yes, swapping out the speakers does improve the Bose system. Absolutely improves the highs since it actually now HAS them! The sounds stage definitely improves through the midrange as well but now that the mids & highs have clarity to my ears it makes the gap down to the subs even more obvious.
Popped in a Telarc sci-fi movie soundtrack CD and that sounded very nice. Good clear strings and when the subs kick in you definitely know it. Then I put in a Patricia Barber CD. This is where the midbass gap shows. The jazz doesn't have that warm presence which is especially noticable in her vocals. We took the same CD over to my car with the Focals and you could instantly hear the difference in the midrange.
Now you absolutely BETTER be able to hear a difference between the systems or I wasted a WHOLE lot of money.
But that's not really my point. What it illustrates to me is that swapping the speakers, while giving you improvement, actually makes the shortcomings of the Bose system all the more apparent.
So when you're planning out your upgrades you really have to decide what your goal is. If clarifying the soundstage and getting some true highs is enough then a swap-out of the 3.5" drivers will accomplish that. If you're looking for a true quality, complete range system though, it's time to replace all of the speakers and install a new amp.
And a gratutious beauty shot, just because a black coupe looks awesome!
Corvette Store
3.5" Coax swap out in C6 Bose - Impressions
and to add, isolate the speakers since there is a big empty cavern behind them. I used expanding foam and built a "cabinet". Worked out nicely for my mid range bass, especially since I am running two 10in subs in the doors. It would of been cheaper to run some HQ 6in components in the doors (where was pipedreams adaptor when I was doing mine?) and it would probably been an excellent set up.
