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Solution to speakers in a Brat - what forum ?!?


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Did some searching for flat panel speakers and found these ultra tiny things. Only 1/2" x 7-1/2" and can handle 10/20 watts (plenty for my purposes in a tiny Brat). Frequency response is said to be 180 to 15,000 Hz.

 

Assuming lack of suckage, they might work great on or in the pillar plastic. Leaving the question of where to put a small sub-woofer... 

 

This speaker: http://www.parts-express.com/fps-c0104mn10viii-mono-1-2-x-7-1-2-planar-speaker-8-ohm-20w--292-352

 

More are here: http://www.parts-express.com/brand/fps-usa/491643

 

292-352_HR_0.jpg

Edited by bendecker
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Did some searching for flat panel speakers and found these ultra tiny things. Only 1/2" x 7-1/2" and can handle 10/20 watts (plenty for my purposes in a tiny Brat). Frequency response is said to be 180 to 15,000 Hz.

 

Assuming lack of suckage, they might work great on or in the pillar plastic. Leaving the question of where to put a small sub-woofer... 

 

This speaker: http://www.parts-express.com/fps-c0104mn10viii-mono-1-2-x-7-1-2-planar-speaker-8-ohm-20w--292-352

 

More are here: http://www.parts-express.com/brand/fps-usa/491643

 

- Great!!! You could also combine them, or put a number of them here or there, making sure the resistance is compensated for! These could fit almost anywhere!

 - OOPS! 67 bucks a piece ?!?! Too rich for my blood. But perfect solutions are not always cheap I guess, lol...

 

As far as sub-woofers go, I'm planning on puuting a couple under the seats. They will give real power and dimension to the sound, without muffling it, because those low tones will come through anyway, as opposed to highs and mid-range.

For that reason, very small but useful subwoofers could be put in the doors, even in that one spot that Subaru puts them, because again, they will not be muffled nearly as much as tweeters and midrange would. - Of course, they could cause some serious rattling I guess, lol...

Edited by Subaruist
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  • 4 weeks later...

I broke out a box full of Home Theater speakers that I have been collecting over the last couple years. I have been taking them apart, finding the best case fronts that I could easily mount, and space the speakers out from the doors/etc, and mating the best speakers together.

These are all magnetically shielded speakers, which I prefer anyway, as I will have a lot of radio and other equipment in the cab, including a very good UMPC that will be the main source of music - MP3's that is. I will need to get a moderate Graphic Equalizer Booster to power the system, one with separate sub-woofer outputs.

The plan so far is to use that horrible mounting spot the factory chose on the doors, facing directly into the side of the seat for some dumb reason.

HOWEVER, I will not be mounting normal speakers there. I have put together mini sub-woofers and strong tweeters in a kind of two-way speaker.

The reason for this is that even facing the side of the seat, sub-woofers can work really well, and tweeters are also less affected by such horrible mounting as all of your mid-range average speakers. There is also room and 'door frame holes' to mount small, almost flush-mount 2-way speakers on the forward corners of the doors.

I was tempted to mount tweeters where the doors have what seem to be holes for those rear-view mirrors that you can adjust from inside the cab, but decided I want to save those for eventually getting those kind of mirrors.

All of these speakers are 50-80 watt, whichis plenty enough for me.

 

I intend to defeat the problem of channel balance for driver and especially passenger by doing one of two things:

(A) Inxstead of 'Left' and 'Right', I will convert them to 'Outer' (door) and 'center' channels. (Anywhere I can mount speakers down the centerline of the cab)

This way, both the driver and the passenger will have their own Left and right channels, without interfering with the other.

(B) I have speaker switch boxes which will handle 3-4 sets of speakers, except that instead of sets of speakers, they will be switching the same speakers to 2 or 3 different arrangements, so I can have traditional Left and Right, Outer and Center channels as mentioned above, or something else, such as my plan to eventually make it effectively a 5.1 to 7.1 surround system. - Why? Why in such a small cab? - Do I plan to watch movies in my cab? - No. I am just a real Audiophile. I tend to look for anywhere I can put more speakers, which is helping in this difficult task of where to put speakers in a Brat cab.

Take lemons and make lemonade - that's something I love to do!

In that tiny cab, I will have all that sound concentrated and compressed into audio rapture bliss!

In the end, I may have to find a way to apply sound deadoning material to the inside of the doors and maybe have to defeat potential rattles of the mechanisms in the doors.

 

Today I got the first speaker mounted on the drivers door - once I get the other one on the passenger door I will take pics.

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Regarding the 'bar' style small speaker boxes pictured above that will go where the visors are supposed to - it turns out that I forgot what I actually had in there - they are actually 20 and 40 watt speakers, manetically shielded, but the funny thing is they each have center speakers that are 100 watt tweeters! - 100 watt tweeters?!?

- Well, since out of the 5 speakers in each bar speaker box, two will be let channel and two will be right channel, I can wire them in pairs to give more effective wattage, and can combine the two channels tweeters into that one center tweeter. It means some possibly tricky wiring or extra wires, but the result will be well worth it !

I think I will also drill a couple holes that some speaker boxes use both for sound pressure relief, and which also act as minor speakers in themselves, and plan on putting them in the ends of these bar boxes facing the windows, so they will bounce off the windows, adding more dimension to the sound.

 

I am also considering getting a batch of small potentiometers, just a few ohms difference in each to act like trim pots, for minor volume changes for each speaker, so that I can fine tune the whole system once it is on line for the best effects. Likely will add sensitive fuses as well, but I am undecided if I need to put those in each speaker/box, or just on the power outputs only.

 

- Mind you, I am NOT one of those people who think that the goal is to turn the whole damned vehicle into a vibrator and rattle box for maximum volume!

I like the quality of sound that you get when you have a large variety of speakers. In such arrangements, no matter what sound the song broadcasts, there will be speakers ideal for it, and with so many (?) speakers, properly wired, I will actually not have to turn the volume up much, because I will essentially be surrounded by the sound, and all but assaulted by the sound from every direction possible. Talk about sound 'immersion', lol...

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sorry to clutter but i just have to ask... are 100 watt tweeters really that unusual? i run a 6.5" 300 watt midbass and 2" 200 watt tweeters separated by a crossover in each one of the doors on my truck... i didnt think that was really that high of wattage

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