Door Panels / Speakers

I know I know. The music from the car comes from the exhaust. The engine alone is a symphony of sound and the 355 should have never been delivered with a radio to begin with.

Yea, well, none of those engineers had kids or a wife.

I have a system specd to allow for some decent sound. My biggest issue? The door panel carpet over the speakers. I mean really???

Has anyone replaced the door panel carpet over the speakers? ...or cut the carpet and installed cut down grills?

Love to hear what has been done and pics if you have them.

 

Watson - Yes, I had this done a few months ago. I totally agree with you. The carpeting on the door panel is just plain silly. Sound was terrible in my Spider.

A local upholsterer was recommended from a dealer buddy of mine. I had him replace the carpeted panels with matching leather panels perforated mildly so as to look as original as possible. (Yes, I kept the carpet segments in case some *future* owner would ever want them, but I can't imagine why. Beyond function, the leather door cards look so much nicer.)

Behind the panels I had new speakers fitted. That said, I still have work to do on the sound in my 355. As you know, space is at a premium in the spiders especially. The vehicle needs subwoofers, possibly behind the seats. I considered across the rear shelf but I am concerned it might interfere with the operation of the top. Would love to hear/see other sounds options from Spider owners out there.

Good luck. I think the leather perforated door speaker panels is a nice upgrade. Cost me about $450 for both sides.

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IMO - that is not going to sound as good as if you used decent "acoustic" carpet.

I think the best solution would be to fabricate a proper grill frame and stretch grill cloth over it.

I too have been battling with what to do about the doors - the speakers sound horrible and I have a high end head unit and amp so the speakers need to be addressed.

I have considered a mild door "pod" to house a deeper speaker and I have also considered tactile bass transducers to add bass.

Obviously the intent would be to keep the car looking as factory as possible as I cannot stand some of the custom jobs I have seen in F-cars - I mean it has to stay tasteful (even to the point that someone looking at the car might think it is original)

 

Small sub-woofer next to passenger's left ankle on a 348, not sure what's behind that panel in a 355. Sounds pretty decent, but you won't be shaking the surrounding cars while at a stoplight.

 

You can read in the 308 section that the speakers are covered in Leather with holes from the factory & folks are generally unhappy with that. There's a couple threads on replacing the leather with leather-colored speaker fabric. Bradan used suede on mine to match the door panels. Looks ok, but meh on sound quality.

 

Here's my solution. I still need to hide the wires and recover the sub to make it look better.

- Tom
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Tom - Did you fabricate yourself? If so, would you have the blueprints/drawings handy? Glad to see you, too, have a Spider and were able to modify something. I was looking at doing something behind the seats on the mini-shelf but was concerned it might interfere with the top operation when down. Happy to see it can be done.

I also like the idea of a sub on the center tunnel between the drivers and passenger foot bays.

ketel

 

Fair criticism. I am not going to say my system sounds great; it doesn't. And I, too, have a high-end system installed that I am not anywhere close to getting the satisfaction of.

But I think my system's weak points is the lack of any back-end in terms of a sub. Sound is very thin. So, as far as a process of elimination goes, I am going to address that issue first before I think about revisiting the design of the door cards.

ketel

 

I have a custom sub encloser wrapped in leather behind the seats that fits right on top of the hydraulic motor for the top.... and speakers in both doors wrapped in matching leather.
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Yes, I made these myself out of MDF. I cut out cardboard pieces, trimmed them and taped them together to fashion a box that fit into each space. Then I used the cardboard as templates to cut out the MDF. The left and right sides are exact opposites of each other. If I get some time this weekend, I'll trace the edges and scan them to PDF format for you.

The subwoofer is a JL Audio 6W3V3-4. The rear speakers are Infinity 6020cs Reference. The sound through the boot is muffled, so you might want to add a tweeter or use two- or three-way speakers in the back instead.

You will definitely need to have a four way amp to drive the door and rear speakers and another amp for the subwoofer.

- Tom

 

I bet that actually sounds killer - and I have to admit if my car came like that or if I could easily buy those pods, I might just go for it - however I am not quite sure I am willing to go that far (especially if I have to build them)

In my younger days (it's terrible to hear myself say that) I would have been all over that - I spent a few years doing custom car audio - however I think I would like to go with something along those lines but more "stealth" looking, possibly a similar door pod but smaller and covered with a single grill.

As far as a subwoofer I am still trying to figure out what I like in terms of aesthetics.

 

I plan on upgrading to a single speaker unit in each door at the end of the season when the car goes to bed.... having a single sub mounted behind/between the seats really gives the stereo some "feel" without going overboard. It helps on long, top down highway driving for sure....

 

I had these pods made. I have since taken them off the car, and have them listed for sale (hint hint lol)
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sorry to disturb the thread but PeteyP... where did you get that footplate for the passagerseat?

 

Ricambi has them...not expensive either

 

Page 2: Racing Pedals & Footrests Ricambi America - Ferrari, Maserati, Lamborghini Parts

 

Just and FYI....on my 512tr...the factory glued the carpet on top of the speaker screen cut outs in the door panel. The glue fused all of the little holes shut. After cutting the screen out the back side, scraping the glue, then poking holes in the back side of the carpet, it does sound better. It retains 100% factory appearance. I hope the factory fixed this by the time the 355 arrived, but you may want to check.

I am at the point now when I am about to just cut the carpet and put in real speaker screens. I think I really do want the radio and Bluetooth phone to be clearer.

 

Ricambi or Hill Engineering

 

I will be doing this same thing as soon as I get my car back. (the heads are almost complete). Thanks for the thread guys.....

 

OK. I put in the stereo.

Previous owner installed the tweeters in the door panels behind the leather pocket...?
Crossover was in the door panel. Overall a really poor installation.

Put the tweeters back in behind the vents. Put the crossovers in the trunk and the 6.5" woofers in the doors.

I upped the ante with more power to try and overcome the carpets.

In the end i have the following:

Alpine HD148BT Head unit

Alpine MTV-f300 bridged to two channels at 150 watts RMS for the tweeters / door speakers.

Polk Audio DB6501 speaker set.

Alpine MRV-500 at 300 watts for the sub

Pioneer TS-SEX251 10" enclosed Subwoofer

It sounds considerably better and does not tie up a lot of trunk space.

If the door speakers continue to fall short I will be cutting the circles out of the carpet and installing a set of grills over the openings....sigh...not ideal, but the next best option IMHO.

Thanks for all the input.

 

I love your subwoofer model# - lol

I think you mean TS-SWX251?

The amp for your mids is a MRV-F300? Unless you are talking the very old version of MRV's, the current MRV's are seriously very underpowered - even bridged. You might want to consider a higher end amp, possibly the Alpine PDX.

For the doors I think if you cut out the leather and re-carpet with a good acoustic carpet, you can keep the stock look and get better sound.


Also, where did you install that subwoofer enclosure? If you want / need more bass, you can swap that woofer for the Pioneer IB-Flat woofer and get a lot better quality bass too.

The Polk BD series has never appealed to me - lately for a "reasonably" priced component set, I have liked the Pioneer TS-D1720C - very good.

 

I'd like to buy them, please contact me.

 

hahahahaha! Yea, one key over and BOOM I get that! I never could type.

The MRV F-300 is 150 watts RMS per side when bridged on two channels. The speakers can only handle 100 RMS so the amp seems fine for the speakers and I do have some growing room if I go bigger on the mid range speaker set.

The DB6501 speakers were already installed...just very poorly. Tweeters behind leather panels, + / - reversed, etc. I decided to give them a try. Now that all the wiring is done, I can swap components pretty easily.

The sub is 19" x 12" x 6" and sets nicely in the front trunk. The 10" woofer does a decent job. It is only 200 RMS with 800 Peak so the 300 watt MRV-500 drives it just fine.

Gotta remember, I am and old fart now not looking for uber loud. Just decent sound that works over the road noise. In the very limited use I have had I can say it sounds OK. Not super great like the Blaupunkt in my Triumph...but OK.

 

Any chance you could take photos? Would love to see how the setup appears in the vehicle.

ketel

 

The door panels look completely stock. Here is the amp / sub install.
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