Excellent Value Speakers

Decapotable · August 19, 2009, 22:33

If anyone is thinking of replacing their door speakers then you might want to check out the following units for £35:

m http://www.misco.co.uk/applications/Sea ... 25&CatId=0 m

These are 6.5" Juice component speakers with crossovers. I have just fitted them to my MR2 and tried them out on a long journey. For the tweeters I removed the decor units and enlarged the holes just slightly. For the bass units I destroyed the orignal cones and spiders and then used these original housings. They took a lot of modification to be honest, a lot of filing to shape. The nub of the problem is that the holes left after butchering the original plastic spiders are too narrow for the new metal spiders to fit in. I preserved the cardboard tubes that are used to seal the front of the speakers to the interior trim and then glued these to the front of the speaker's frame keeping the seal as originally intended. I have no idea what the tweeter construction is but I believe the bass units are injection-moulded polypropylene. The sound? I think they are pretty good - damn good for £35 to be honest. I can detect no significant resonance from the bass units meaning in practice there is no boom - a real contrast from the original undamped pulp paper cone units. Some might be disapointed as resonance is so common they come to expect it. Instead these are really impressively clean. The tweeters are a massive improvement over the originals - which were simply terrible. I can now hear music and speach at speed with the roof down. However these Juice tweeter units do appear to suffer from resonance but at the top of their range. The effect is to make the sound somewhat sibilant. Actually this rather helps maintain the audibility through the wind noise.

loadswine · August 19, 2009, 23:06

Well for £35 they have to be better than the woeful stock items. Not a bad cheap and cheerful alternative , good to share this stuff. s:)

s:)
Interesting to hear of the work involved in adapting the stock "woofer". MDF is always a better bet, and not at all hard to fabricate either.

Decapotable · August 20, 2009, 09:31

I considered making MDF mounts but I had limited time and could not find any pictures of mounts made by other people. They are probably there I just could not find them. Does everyone keep the sealed tube through to the interior panel?

Decapotable · January 4, 2010, 21:26

Thought I would update this. After a few thousand miles these speakers started to become intermittent. So, I went back into the doors. It turned out to be the connections to the cross-overs. These are screw terminals with captive plates on the screws. the screws had loosened - not come free just loose.

I may have tempted fate by not using bare wire but instead terminating the cables with spades (the sort with holes in). Braided copper is a bit compressable after all and the base and captive plates are both ridged suggesting they might make use of the deformation of the wire to provide natural locking. I have now put these back together with locking washers which wile being a somewhat odd solution hopefully will sort the problem.

The speakers themselves are doing just fine.

stargazer30 · February 1, 2010, 18:04

I just ordered a set for my MR2. Everywhere else seems to be selling these for £70 to £100 not sure why they are so cheap on the linked site above?

I'm going to use MDF adaptors though. I hope they give more bass than the stock ones as they are dreadful. Can't hear them over the engine either! s:shock: :shock: s:shock:

David

stargazer30 · February 3, 2010, 20:01

I fitted my set of juice speakers today (well I've done one door so far) They sound shockinglycrap! Worse than the stock speakers. I've already put an aftermarket pioneer HU in so its not due to lack of power from the HU. The speakers are not producing much bass, are quiet and distort when I up the volume. I suspect I have the polarity the wrong way around but didn't have the time today to mess around with it. I had assumed the standard speaker wiring pink was + and purple was - anyone confirm this?

stargazer30 · February 4, 2010, 16:07

Got the speakers working better. The problem was the MDF brackets I'd built. They were too thin and the speakers were rattling the panels and distorting. I had to build some spacer rings to bring them forward closer to the door panel grill (like the stock setup). They sound better now but not as good as I'd hoped. I think part of the prob maybe the crossovers absorb a fair amount of power so the HU is having to work hard to drive them, I think a separate AMP may make them sound better.

stargazer30 · February 9, 2010, 16:01

Well I've been on a week now with those Juice speakers and have tried everything to get them to sound better. Have made better baffles, sound proofed the doors better, tried adjusting the graphic on the HU and the bottom line is they are just not very good. I recon the stock paper speakers in my 05 plate are just as good (and a little more bassy to boot).

So I admitted defeat and the fact I'd wasted £35 on them and went and bought some Focals instead. More expensive but worth it they sound 10 times better :-) :-) :-) Just goes to show you only get what you pay for and going cheap can be more expensive in the long run s:(

s:(

One watch out for you guys, in the week the Juice speakers were in the car, the baffles and the speaker got fairly wet. The stock speakers have what looks like a rain guard on the back but the aftermarkets don't. I've used silicone on the door card to see if it stops the water getting in but I have a feeling the window seals are the point where its getting in. Really hoping my new focals don't end up getting knackered by it!

Anyone else had this prob?