DIY Simple and Easy Speaker Mounting Rings/Adaptors

[Hammer97e]

The past few weeks I have been slowly putting together a system for my B7. While taking pics of my build, I got the idea of doing a DIY for speaker rings as I don't recall ever coming across my way of doing them. I have seen people who make rings out of wood or use the various pre made rings, while that is perfectly fine, I am quite fond of my way . Even though my way does entail the destruction of the OEM speaker, I think it while worth it. There are certainly times when custom rings are needed, our cars are known to have some strange acoustics due to the large center console, but for your average install, these rings are perfect. I apologize for the low quality of the pics, all I had was my iPhone 5. Also, this is my first attempt at a DIY, so please bear with me. Please feel free to ask any questions and I will do my best to answer them.

My system consists of:
RNSE -> Audison BitTen with DRC -> Hertz HDP5
Fronts - Hertz Hi-Energy HT25 tweets, Hi-Energy HV-165XL mids and Audison Voce crossovers
Rears - Hertz Hi-Energy HCX165 Coaxials
Sub - AudioMobile Elite 2210

Virgin Door:


Rear Door with panel removed:


The next couple of pics show the OEM speaker in comparison to the Hertz that is replacing it.



Snap off the back panel of the factory speaker and set it aside for later.


Now, use a razor blade and cut out the surround of the factory speaker. Cut the tinsel leads at the metal tabs. Grab the cone and rip it our from the spider. You should now have something looking very similar to this:


Use a dremel or your cutting tool of choice and cut out the basket and magnet from the upper portion of the speaker. You now have your new mounting ring. Depending on the depth of your aftermarket speaker, you will also need to cut out the grille from the back panel that was removed earlier. I usually only cut out as much grille as needed.



Now solder on a foot or so of speaker wire onto the metal tabs that the tinsel leads were cut from. You can go back to the door and plug the factory speaker harness, flip the ring around and see which metal tab is positive and which is negative. I usually take a pick and scratch a plus and a minus on the tabs to make sure polarity is correct.



Now mount the aftermarket speaker to your new ring, connect the speaker wire, and snap the back panel back onto the mounting ring.



You now have your finished product and can mount it back in the door. Only plug in the factory speaker harness coming from the door put, leave the factory tweeter harness unplugged and secure it off to the side.





And there you have it. You now have an aftermarket speaker mounted in a nicely sealed package. Replacing the speaker down the road, like when you throw in some cheapies when you go to sell the car will be super easy, unscrew from the ring, unplug it, plug the new one in and mount it back to the door.

The photobucket links should, I hope, lead you to more pictures of my build. I have been doing car audio professionally off and on since the mid '90s. This is about as crazy as my personal systems get these days. Front doors get a little more interested. I mounted the Voce crossovers in the door to limit the amount of work, running wire through the door boot is never any fun on our cars, but I still use the factory harness for the tweet and the mid and end up with something very similar.

Once again, please let me know if you have any questions!

[k20crx]

all i did was rip the stock speaker out of the mounting cups, cut the webbing and mount my new aftermarket speakers in the OEM cups..

[jrdemail]

This is very helpful, and a very efficient use of the original equipment! So if I understand correctly, you are no longer using your factory tweeters right? I'm curious how this would work if you decided to use components, and mount a new tweeter in the door as well. Would it create a problem with incorrect Ohms?

[Hammer97e]

This is very helpful, and a very efficient use of the original equipment! So if I understand correctly, you are no longer using your factory tweeters right? I'm curious how this would work if you decided to use components, and mount a new tweeter in the door as well. Would it create a problem with incorrect Ohms?

Correct, no factory tweeters, in the rear doors. My photos are only of the rear speakers. My fronts, which I am using components, are not all that different. The mid is installed exactly the same. I am using a 25mm Hertz tweeter, the same size as the factory tweet, in the factory tweet location. The tweet fits in the factory location and I used just a little bit of hot glue to secure it in. I also put the crossover in the door, not something I usually do, but compared to a Cobalt or something, our doors are pretty moisture free. I velcro'ed the crossover to the door panel, just behind the door pocket, and used foam to make sure it stays secure and doesnt rattle.

Here are some pics, once again sorry for the poor quality. At the time I used quick disconnects on my tweets so I could experiment with phasing. Also, you can see quick disconnect right about the mid, this is my input to the crossover, since the tweet and the crossover are on the panel, these along with the factory plug for the mid, make it easy to the panel on and off as necessary.






Hope that helps.

[jrdemail]

Thanks! Very helpful shot seeing the tweet location before pulling my door panel. My setup will be very similar as I don't like cutting factory wiring up if I can avoid it. How do you like the sound of your system now? I havent heard of Hertz speaker company before, let me know if you like the setup. What amp did you use? I'm assuming you used the trunk for amp mounting and tapped the original bose harness for access to the oem speaker wiring?

[Hammer97e]

Thanks for catching that, I forgot to list my amp. I am using an Hertz HDP5. Its a full-range class D 5 channel amp. First class D amp I have ever owned and I am actually quite surprised how it sounds. It packs quite a bit of power given it's small footprint. My setup is just for jamming and it does a pretty good job at that. I have competed in USAC and IASCA in the past and have owned speakers from just about everybody. I just wanted to do something clean and simple that sounded decent. So far, that's exactly what i've ended up with. I am still working on putting an amp rack together, for the time being the amp and BitTen are simply mounted to a carpeted board in the trunk. I tested several different amps before settling on the HDP5, so a simple board did the job while doing so.

I did a couple of things to get signal. First, and easiest. I cut the oem speaker wire in each kick panel and ran speaker wire (twisted 16g) from both sides back to the trunk. This gave me front R and L signal as well as the speaker wires for the amp output. I did use the factory amp harness for rear R and L signal as well as the outputs for the rear channels of the amp. Also at the factory amp harness is a white wire that you can use for amp turn on, however it will turn on when you open a door, which is fine, I will eventually be using this for led accent lighting in the trunk. The BitTen is an awesome piece, it can take the high level inputs from the fronts, low level from the rears and de-eq the signal on all channel coming from the RNSE.

Hertz is really nice stuff. Make sure you get from an authorized dealer, tons of fake stuff floating out there. The new Phoenix Gold is some great stuff as well. I didn't really want to go with a large amp, but I have heard a few cars lately with PG's new Elite amps and I have been blown away. Most impressive was a car that we replaced Audison VRx amps with the 5 channel Elite amp it left the VRx in the dust. Their component speakers are great as well. Actually I originally had replaced the oem speakers with PG Ti1 components running off the factory amp and that was a huge improvement.

Couple more pics:

[r2sphinx]

Nice Job