Will upgrade all speakers and add a sub

[Jamesrr]

Finally got the YouTube video up of my speaker install so will post here to help the with the knowledge base.

We have a Trophy ER/Essence LR 77 and I've commenced my upgrade of the speakers, keeping the head unit amp.

I bought a JBL Stage2 604C set for the front dash tweeters & door bass drivers and a Stage2 624 "coaxial" set for the rear doors.

I got the 624's before I read that the rear speakers had a low pass filter and didn't do the full range, however a number of more recent comments have said there isn't a filter and the sound is "full range".

I may still leave the rear speakers stock as we also have an "SE SR"/Excite 51 for which I think the JBL 624s would be a great option.

After watching @Alansurfer's video I read the comments on Youtube and saw that someone else had used the JBLs with great success, which made me very happy (and a little relieved)

If you want to keep it simple upgrading the tweeters makes a good improvement. A big improvement is vocals and horns in jazz are so much clearer, the sound deadening also is well worth the effort.

So far I've got the tweeters done. I can wholeheartedly confirm that just replacing these with the JBL midrange/tweeters has made a huge improvement.

The JBLs have a 5.8kHz crossover point and come with a relatively large crossover unit. As it turned out, too large to fit in the under dash space Ah well, I have to construct my own. It's not such a big deal. There's crossover calculators you can use to determine appropriate values for the Capacitor you need for the midrange/tweeter.

After mucking around and scrounging in my parts bin I came up with a better idea that also solved the cable identification "problem"...

The original tweeters have the capacitor installed on the speaker mount along with the "female" connector for the speaker wires. You can reuse the old speaker and mount as the crossover unit! I checked the capacitance of the original and it's close enough to the correct value for the JBL crossover requirement.

I also cut away the same part of the existing mount as shown in Alan's video so I could hot-glue the appropriate piece for my JBLs. Be careful with how much glue you use. You don't want too much on the "inside" as it can stop the tweeter fitting nicely.

Here's some picture that hopefully "explain" it...

This shows the new mount glued to the cutaway original with the speaker installed.

the new leads soldered to the old speaker plugs. The red wire connects to the speaker lug with the capacitor inline.

this shows the leads using the old speaker assembly. The original wires are clipped away from the old speaker and soldered to the new speaker wires. The existing female socket on the mount can then be replugged into the original wiring. As long as you solder the new red wire to the old lug with the cap attached you'll ensure the correct speaker polarity and crossover function.

A win!

Next... The front door bass drivers.