Any upgraded stereos in 348 Spider?

How different are the 348s and 355s? I put a beautiful system in my 355 Spider.

Alpine CD player w/ iPod control
Alpine Digital 4-ch amp
Focal 5.25in separates bi-wired with the 4-ch amp.

I can get you all the model numbers if interested. Not too expensive at all and sounds incefedibly loud and clear even with the top down and the Quicksilver exhaust at 8000rpm.

 

I would be interested in the specs. Sounds like a nice system.

 

The original wiring schematic shows two woofers in the doors and two tweeters in the dash. It looks like there may not be any stock speakers behind you. My 348 TS had four 6x9's installed behind the seats. Not much help for your spider app but I am thinking that you are going to have to add some speakers to get some serious sound. Good luck with your upgrade.

 

Standard they have speakers in the doors and tweeters in the dash behind the side air vents...they are not bad once a new head unit is in place. An upgrade of the door speaker can be troublesome as there is not a lot of depth there to work with and short of getting out the tin snips your options are limited as to what will fit and still give a factory appearance.

I would ensure the factory speakers are in good condition if not then replace them and fit a quality head unit (I like the Alpine range) and see how that suits your needs, then if more sound is requires I would put a powered sub in behind one of the seats. This is the system I have in my car and it always impresses me when I (rarely) crank it up...big sound does not have to take up big space....

 

Check your mids in the doors. When I looked at mine, the foam surrounds were completely disintegrated. I ended up replacing my head unit, the tweeters behind the side air vents and the mids with poly cones.
The other problem to address is that the mids are covered by the carpet on the lower door panel. I didn't like the look of the carpet on the doors so I had an upholstery shop remove the carpet and cover the panel in leather that leaves the speaker opening exposed. But there is a gold colored factory wire mesh grill behind the carpet that I have painted black and need to install. I got sidetracked on some other projects, but I hope to get back to this in a month or so.
I'm still not totally happy with the sound so I may consider a subwoofer later, maybe a free-air unit mounted into the passenger side of the console. Check the recent thread of the 355 guy who made a footwell sub box if you want to get fancy.

 

Could you please post a photo of your door skins? I am interested to see how this looks.

 

Here is what I did in my 1995 348 spider:
Complete custom fiberglassed FoCal system with Eclipse tuner and custom floor board in the trunk to hide the amps.
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You can hook up practically whatever kind of stereo you want and upgrade your door speakers and have rears installed all for under $1000 by local professional stereo shop. I added Boston Acoustic speakers(I think ) and a 8 inch woofer to foot well, also installed a heads up remote so I don't have to open and close the stereo compartment all the time, plus if you are a taller guy like me it makes reaching the stereo difficult so the remote comes handy and I never have to take my eyes off the road.

Good luck.
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How did you install that "Engine Start" button. Awesome!

 

My system is simply amazing. I will get you the model numbers tonight and if you are interested my girlfriend is the one who got me the discount when I purchased the components because she sells
cell phones at a car audio shop.

 

Same question for Jeff, I also have a Spider and while the center between the seats would work, the two others that get covered by the boot would likely sound a little muttled right? Seems like plenty of power to blow the boot off though. I did all the same searches when I first got mone and I find that there are very few times that I actually have the stereo on. For the non-Spiders the deck above the ECU's seems the perfect spot for rears, for us though it would always seems that the boot is in the way?

 

If you own a Ferrari why would you want to ruin its fine exhaust note with a sound system competing against it? I'll never figure out these young kids nowadays... ;(

 

The top folds with no problem at all. The setup was designed with this taken into account.

 

The sound is not muted by the boot at all. It's all about designing and taking things into account, which was done, it sounds perfect.

 

I will try to take pics of the box's behind the seat and they are not muffled at all in fact I had to fade them out a bit you can really feel them behind your head . The subwoofer is a bit tricky we had to custom make the wall that it is mounted to that way the car can go back to original, not hard just time consuming. Your last question HILL ENGINEERING they have tonnes of stuff like the aluminum dials and guage faces they look awesome installed. Here are some pics of there stuff I installed in less that 30 min, the first pic shows the rear speaker and box the top folds down with room to spare.



Here is the link to Hill engineering, Happy shopping

http://www.hillengineering.co.uk/catalog/index.php
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The top does not fold in behind the setup, it folds down around it. There is no modification to the top and how it folds down on my spider at all.
I will try and get a wide shot to post.

 

Ask Daniel to see if he can get it for you.

 

Here are a couple of photos with the new leather covered lower door panels. The first photo shows the panel without the speaker grill and the second photo shows it with the grill in place. My factory grill was originally a gold color which didn't matter when it was hidden behind the carpet, but I spray painted it black since it is visible now. It's a good solution, but not great. First, the grill is fairly thin metal so it probably wouldn't offer much protection. Second, it is vey opaque so the speaker is quite visible which I don't care for from a purely aesthetic point of view. The problem is it's going to be hard to find a ready-made alternative grill because of the way that the door handle truncates the top of the speaker opening.
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