2013 Coupe premium audio upgrade (pic heavy)

[Gixxerfool]

When I had my pickup I had MB Quarts through out and after purchasing my Coupe found myself hating the audio system. I expected better from a newer vehicle. In researching options I found @Hillstones thread and mirrored that pretty closely. So many thanks to him for still replying to the thread and answering my questions.

I tracked down Mercman and ordered one of his harnesses. Really made life a lot easier. I am not a fan of hacking up harnesses so I bought a used amp and removed the other connector from it and made a harness from the aftermarket amp to the factory wiring. This will also allow me to simply plug and play the factory amp in a few minutes if I need to.

I went back and forth on speakers for awhile as I am not one to keep buying stuff and swapping them out. I had considered more than a few brands for the fronts and settled on Focals. They went on a good sale and grabbed them. The rears were a bit of an issue. Focal doesn't make anything that fits into the rear deck in my price range. There is a clearance issue with any magnet over 80mm with hitting the torsion bars. Someone recommended JBL's Club series and since I ran out of good ideas, for $100 it was worth a shot. The sub is still up in the air. I have a few ideas, but until I figure out ,my plan, I pulled it out of the deck. It wasn't doing much anyways. I did get the JL XD700/5 amp. I found it on eBay for about half of retail, so I scooped that up too.

The list of equipment is as follows:

Focal PS 165V front components
JBL Club 6520 rear coaxials
JL Audio XD700/5 amp
Mercman Harness

I know, I know on to the pics.




I forgot to take a pic of the stock tweeter, but we all know what that looks like.




I took the crossovers, there were 4, Mercman box and my harness and made a bracket to mount them to. They reside in the stock amp location.



To be continued...

 

[Gixxerfool]

Since it seems a lot of people mount the amp under the seat and no one sits behind me anyways, I did the same. Pulled the seat out and ran the power cable under the sill plate and the speaker harnesses under the console and they pop out under the seat.




It stays nice and hidden with the seat in position, but can be accessed by putting the seat all the way forward.




So I still have to get it fine tuned and figure my plan out for a sub setup. I do have Dynamat and baffles as well for the doors. It sounds worlds better. I made a quick video to compare the differences.



Once I get the sub up and running Ill add an updated video.

 

[webby]

nicely done man. Even though it's a youtube video, and you're capturing the sound with a phone or whatever, you can clearly tell it's significantly better audio with your setup.

 

[Gixxerfool]

nicely done man. Even though it's a youtube video, and you're capturing the sound with a phone or whatever, you can clearly tell it's significantly better audio with your setup.

Thank you. I'm very pleased with the results.
Initially I didn't think there was going to be any discernible difference. I was surprised you could even hear a difference with just the speakers installed. I had read some people had worse sound after speaker replacement. I'll have to find the pic of the audio waveforms from iMovie, its apparent there too.

 

[Flightmaster127]

Clean looking install. Looks like you really took your time and planned before install instead of just trying to make it look good after the fact.

 

[Gixxerfool]

Clean looking install. Looks like you really took your time and planned before install instead of just trying to make it look good after the fact.

Thank you. I tried. My personality is all over the map. I try to not hack anything up. If I can install it and then reverse it if need be, I go that route. I also wanted it to look as stock as possible. My pickup was anything but stock looking. Likely why the system got stolen. This required me to do a lot of measuring and test fitting. It paid off in the end result.