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Idea and start of the hunt for new speakers


amsandun

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I have always been a lover of music (though I never did music as a subject in my life). I listened and enjoyed music in many categories and languages since childhood. Also I wanted to listen to them in quality as I grew up. Hence, I have purchased many computer speakers, headphones, hand-free and later on decent earbuds and Bluetooth speakers from reputed brands whenever I could spare some money.

And suddenly it occurred to me that after owning a car for 6+ years, I haven't upgraded it's speakers for more quality and crisp sound. But I did wanted to like several years back and I couldn't do it at that time(I even posted a question in AL forum about the topic).

So I got the idea and started working on it. What size speakers my car got (Vitz 2016 KSP130), which brands and models would match, where to find, will they be original or fakes and so on...So far doing this myself as a DIY was not in my mind totally.

Most famous brands in this part of the world came up like Pioneer, Kenwood (not many options available), JBL and Infinity. I called several highly rated shops and visited them. Almost all recommended to go with Infinity or JBL. After my own product research, I was also leaning more towards Infinity rather than JBL or Pioneer (where all 3 were Vietnam made as said by them)

Infinity model available in every store was Infinity Reference series REF-6532ix 6-1/2" coaxial car speakers with 60W RMS and 180W Peak Power.

Price tag were 27,500/- to 28,500/- per pair with installing at no extra cost. JBL were also the same range and pioneer were cheaper than that.

I was ok with the price too as I believed Infinity would be the best choice but one attitude of every car audio guys here got me in to second thoughts that I may not get what I actually want by replacing speakers. I will explain in the next entry.

Couple of weeks ago I went to Pettah electronic market area and started asking around. I know you are now like, "what? pettah? Isn't that the last place someone would look to buy genuine or original products?". I also knew this but also know that pettah, whether you like to believe or not, is the place where more than 50% of Sri Lankan imports are coming to (from rice, sugar, Big onion to everything). There will be good products as well as items you should avoid.

Back to the speakers, in most of the shops in pettah, only China made pioneers were available. At a one shop, a guy asked me whether I want original products based on my preference of brand and he directed me to a another market. Only in this market, I could see JBL and Infinity brands. They also had other models of Infinity like Primus 6512is and more premium infinity Kappa Series (Can't remember the exact model) which no any other shop in Colombo had. As I checked closely, they were too Vietnam made and I'd swear that REF-6532ix were also the same as I saw in other car audio shops. Maybe I was wrong but my instincts said they were the same and went ahead with the buy.

After a little negotiation, I bought the same Infinity model for 20,000/- Rupees.

So, that ended the speaker hunt. By this time I had set my mind to do it myself and in the next entry, I will post why and how I planned to go about it.

Hope so far so good as this is my first blog as well as DIY 😀

To be continued.

 

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Edited by amsandun

4 Comments


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Wonderful !

Speaker swaps are easy and fun thing to do....some things that may slow you down and you should be prepared for:

1. Getting the inner door latch so that the door upholstery can be taken off can get fidgety. Be patient and gentle.

2. Speaker mounts: The speaker gets mounted onto a mounting tray, and the mounting tray gets screwed onto the door. Toyota, in their infinite wisdom, decided to "rivet" the speaker onto the tray on some of its models.   So you will have to somehow remove the mounting tray off the old speaker so you can fit them on the new speakers :) Can get very annoying. There should be a thread on the forums on this when someone else was trying to fix new speakers.

 

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5 hours ago, iRage said:

1. Getting the inner door latch so that the door upholstery can be taken off can get fidgety. Be patient and gentle.

Thanks @iRage, removing door panel was straightforward. Pried off the centre console and disconnected the wire harness (this was a bit tricky for me which I'm going to explain in upcoming entries) and just 3 Philips screws to take out.

At the moment of writing this, I'm done installing driver side door speaker. I couldn't complete both doors in one day due to my lack of experience. (I was nervous of course)

5 hours ago, iRage said:

2. Speaker mounts: The speaker gets mounted onto a mounting tray, and the mounting tray gets screwed onto the door. Toyota, in their infinite wisdom, decided to "rivet" the speaker onto the tray

😆tell me about it, actually it's not the speaker riveted to tray but mounting tray and speaker is one unit and that unit is riveted to the door itself. Had to drill out everything out with so much care not to damage the door metal. I will be explaining in detail in next entries.

This is how it came out from factory. Toyota Wisdom causing more trouble for these simple upgrades.

factoryspeaker.thumb.JPG.bfece011835d5b07b7f9e70b19a6f494.JPG

  • Haha 1
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Well...I am sure Toyota saved 1 yen per car by doing that. The weight savings from 3 nuts/bolts or screws would have added atleast 0.001hp more. Weight savings FTW !

  • Haha 2
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Amazing to read the series. Care to share where you bought the speakers from? I'm also on the lookout for an underseat subwoofer and speakers for my Allion

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