simple and effective way to increase midbass response in the stock door location
 

as you know, i am a big proponent of kick panels, to me the advtange of doing kicks is night and day improvement over stock locations.

the main advantages to me are: increased midbass response, power handling, imaging and staging...

but i also understand that some will always prefer to have speakres in the door. after doing a few Gs and Zs wit stock door locations, i honestly am disappointed at the midbass response out of the stock location. midbass is soft and not defined.

so i conjured up a simple albeit effective way to solve this issue.

the main problem with the stock door location is that its free air, like subs, midbass speakres can produce a lot cleaner lower frequencys by having some kind of enclosure, where as when the speaker cone moves, the air behind it provide some kine of pressured cushioning, giving hte speaker more control over its movement, thus more defined, tighter midbass.

so...basically what i made is a little pod that sits inside the door and provides this enclsoure for hte speakres.

1. cut out the trim ring out of 1/2" mdf

2. secure it to a foam baffle, cut out the bottom to the appropriate depths for hte speakres, nice thing about DLS speakers is that they are shallow :)

3. fiberglass the baffle so it becomes rigid

4. dampen the inside of hte baffle with liquid dampening

5. thick carpeted bottom. the reason why idont go fully sealed is that i have always found when there is a semi-permiable membrane on the enclosure for the speaker to breath through, it creates less of a build up in the 100-200 hz range while sacrificing little interms of midbass. think of it as a poor mans AP vent :)

so here is what hte pod looks like, its definetly not pretty, but not mean tto be at all :)

http://simplicity.elitecaraudio.org/pod1.jpg

http://simplicity.elitecaraudio.org/pod2.jpg

http://simplicity.elitecaraudio.org/pod3.jpg

basically,t he idea is, slip tis into the stock location first, and secure it to the car


http://simplicity.elitecaraudio.org/pod4.jpg


http://simplicity.elitecaraudio.org/pod5.jpg

then secure the sepaker to the pod, here you see the midbass of a DLS iridium set


http://simplicity.elitecaraudio.org/pod6.jpg

and done, i tested it on antoher car and man, does it make a big difference :)

just wanted to share :)

of course this will in no means give you better imaging and staging, and wont prevent any kind of door vibrations, but it does give you good midbass, wchih to me at least, it the single worst offense of hte stock location :)

bing, if you made these babies with an MDF ring that could mount right up to the mounting points that the stock speakers use and secure with the same bolts, i bet you'd be selling them like hotcakes to DIY'ers. these are the MDF rings i made for my Polk db6500 comps...

http://sig35coupe.com/stereo/polkdb/polkdb1.JPG
http://sig35coupe.com/stereo/polkdb/polkdb5.JPG

i thought about that, i can utilize a friend who has a CNC machine to mass produce the wooden part :) hmm

we will see, right now, so overloaded with other prodjcts, unless people realy wants them...

but they do involve a bit of work to finish (despite looking crappy lol), about 4 hours easy on each set...so i mean heck, if i were to sell them, they would be pretty expesniv...not usre if there is much of a market for that ;)

http://simplicity.elitecaraudio.org/pod3.jpg

dayum that looks sooo GHETTO!
count me in for a pair to install my UP6 :D

hehe yeah i know, isnt it the ultimate ghetto look? lol ductape for the win!

but it works lol...

once i get a few more of these built, i will figure out a way to make them look more...uh appealin ;)

b

I am almost sure i would buy, even expensive but cheaper is better

Mark

I'd buy a set.

You can accomplish the same thing with the right spacer stack and using the thick foam weatherstripping at Home Depot.

Of course, if you're disappointed in the midbass response of the UR6s, its QTS is much more suited for enclosures than for doors. I was disappointed in the UR midbass in some cars also...That's why the UP is my ticket.

For me it's not as much a possibility of better performance as it looks and feels like a cleaner solution.

Hey el_duderino,

I was wondering if you still have pictures of the UP6 with the weatherstripping on it. I would like to see how you did it so I can do it for my car.

Thanks in advance.

I will dig some up...

What material did you use for the "carpeting"? Almost looks like a thick felt.