Speaker upgrade

[8ball_99]

Stuff came in and my door speakers are in. Truck sounds 10x better. Did some adjusting on the amp and I think I have it where it needs to be. Very happy with it so far. I did have to use the acubass on the amp to try and put some of the lower frequencies back that the bose amp filters out. It sounds great, but it would be better to just bypass the bose amp. Unfortunately I don't guess that's an option yet. A DSP and tuning would probably be good too. I don't have experience or the equipment to tune a DSP. Not to mention that would have been twice the price. I think for just a single 4 channel amp and a speaker swap its pretty darn good. Here is some random pictures of the install

 

[landpilot]

How much Kilmat did you end up putting in the doors? Did it make a lot of difference? Install looks great! I like the way you mounted the tweeters in the A-pillars, looks factory.

 

[8ball_99]

How much Kilmat did you end up putting in the doors? Did it make a lot of difference? Install looks great! I like the way you mounted the tweeters in the A-pillars, looks factory.

Thanks. I bought a 36sqft box, but I only used about 16sqft. I put some beside the front seats where insulation was missing. In all four doors about as far as I could reach through the speaker holes. I also put some on the aluminum plate I made to mount the Amp under the seat. I might go through and do the floor of the truck, but I haven't decided yet.

Honestly I think these trucks are pretty quiet inside the cab. Pretty good insulation every where and there is a decent amount of the factory goop they shoot on. When reaching up inside the doors I even felt some squares of similar material frome the factory. The vapor barrier in the doors is even a thicker rubberized material. So I decided to leave it on. I don't really know how much difference it made. I changed speakers and did the kilmat at the same time. Bass and mid range is much improved on the door speakers. How much of that is the kilmat I don't know. It wasn't expensive and is easy to put on so I figured it couldn't hurt

 

[landpilot]

Sounds good. I’ve got about that much left over from another project so I won’t need to buy any. Thanks!

 

[JcGabrie]

Factory Rear doors are 3.6 ohms. So front doors are 2.0 ohm. Dash speakers are 3.4 ohm. Dash speakers are 2.75". Front doors are 6"x9". Rear doors I guess are technically 6 1/2"" by the enclosure. I'd say the actual speaker is more like a 5 1/4" though. Here is the factory Rear beside an aftermarket 6 1/2". The actual speaker on the aftermarket is obviously larger. The speaker plug adapters for a 21 chevy silverado with bose works even though it's not listed for the refreshed models. Polarity is also the same. HTH
View attachment 1015

I don't know if it's a stupid question
Rear doors are 3.6ohms if I swap for 2ohm speakers it will sound louder?
Does the stock Bose amp will work with that impedance?

 

[8ball_99]

I don't know if it's a stupid question
Rear doors are 3.6ohms if I swap for 2ohm speakers it will sound louder?
Does the stock Bose amp will work with that impedance?

Not a stupid question at all. Yes if you go down on the resistance of the speaker it will be louder at the same volume level. Since the front speakers are 2.0 ohm it's a safe bet the Bose amp can handle going down to 2 ohms on any of the channels.

 

[JcGabrie]

Not a stupid question at all. Yes if you go down on the resistance of the speaker it will be louder at the same volume level. Since the front speakers are 2.0 ohm it's a safe bet the Bose amp can handle going down to 2 ohms on any of the channels.

Not a stupid question at all. Yes if you go down on the resistance of the speaker it will be louder at the same volume level. Since the front speakers are 2.0 ohm it's a safe bet the Bose amp can handle going down to 2 ohms on any of the channels.

Thank you!
Now the hard part is to find 2ohms speakers for dash, front and rear doors, I tried searching at Crutchfild with no luck.

 

[8ball_99]

Thank you!
Now the hard part is to find 2ohms speakers for dash, front and rear doors, I tried searching at Crutchfild with no luck.

I don't think you will have much luck. The best bet I came up with was the infinitys that I got. I wasn't sure if the amp would work out. So I wanted speakers that would do well with the factory amp if it came down to it. The doors aren't to hard. The 2 3/4" in the dash though. Not a many options in that size period, much less 2ohm.

 

[8ball_99]

Figured I'd do an update since I made some changes lol. It was better for sure, but it just wasn't where I wanted it. I ended up swapping my 4 channel amp out for a 6 channel that has DSP built in. The dash speakers were a little too bright with them and the front doors setup as 3 ways. Couldn't turn the dash down with out turning the 6x9s down. Also still didn't have much control over the eq settings. Just had channel summing and that was it.

New amp has full DSP so all the Eq adjustments you could ever want. Also with it being 6 channel the dash mids and tweeters are on their own channel. Then the 6x9 woofers have their own and then the rear doors. Much better balance now. Can turn down the highs on the dash with out killing the midrange bass from the doors. With the digital EQ I was able to fix what bose did. Sounds great now. No more clock radio sound lol.

Imo to anyone who is going to go through the hassle of adding an amp, just go a head and get a DSP or get an Amp with DSP built in. All the channel from the bose amp has some weird crossovers settings. Channel summing helps, but you really just need to be able to adjust all the frequencies to balance them back out.

Few pictures of the new amp and where it's mounted. With the seat in a normal position you can barely see it. More importantly I kept my storage space under the back seat haha

 

[landpilot]

Which 6-channel amp did you end up with?

 

[8ball_99]

Which 6-channel amp did you end up with?

Audio Control D-6. 1200. I looked around a bunch. Seemed like the best option to get DSP and a 6 channels in a relatively small space. JL audio has a nice all in one also, but it's a little expensive and it's lower wattage. But I mainly went with audio control because the DSP part seemed easier for the non professional lol

 

[landpilot]

Nice, that’s a really good unit!!

 

[8ball_99]

Nice, that’s a really good unit!!

It seems to work great. The DSP part isn't too hard to use. It's pretty cool to see exactly what's coming in and what's going out. Adjust it in real time on the laptop screen. Space was a lot of the reason to get it all in one, but looking at buying a DSP then a amp or amps wasn't any cheaper. This does it all and just barely fits in that location. Any amp that's wider or much taller probably isn't going to fit under the front seat.

 

[landpilot]

It seems to work great. The DSP part isn't too hard to use. It's pretty cool to see exactly what's coming in and what's going out. Adjust it in real time on the laptop screen. Space was a lot of the reason to get it all in one, but looking at buying a DSP then a amp or amps wasn't any cheaper. This does it all and just barely fits in that location. Any amp that's wider or much taller probably isn't going to fit under the front seat.

How did you tap into the speaker harness?

 

[8ball_99]

How did you tap into the speaker harness?

You can access all of them from here. If you look back in the thread that rough diagram has the wire layout and the color code. Once you get past the rear door the different channels start to branch off. But at the rear passenger side door all 7 are there. You can tape the wires back up with Tesa tape and it will look just like factory again.

 

[landpilot]

Thanks, did you cut and extend the wires over to the D6.1200? I was wondering if I could make a harness…

 

[8ball_99]

Thanks, did you cut and extend the wires over to the D6.1200? I was wondering if I could make a harness…

I did cut mine and I just used spade connectors. I did it in a way that I could just reconnect everything back the way it was if needed. The wires coming from the bose amp has female spade connectors on them. Then I used a length of speaker wire with male spade connectors from there to the new amp for the input. Then from the new amp I used another length wire with female connectors to the stock wires I was going to use. The stock wires to the speakers have a male connector. So basically if I were to remove the amp and extra wire I can just plug all the factory wires back together. Since the speakers all have male ends and the wire from both amps have female ends. So the speakers can just plug in to either amp. I ran new wires for both the dash speakers. So those speakers connect straight to the amp. Since I added tweeters I had to run a new wire anyway up to the dash. It's just as easy to run two at the same time and not mess with cutting the factory plug off the dash lead.

For the door speakers I couldn't really see a decent way to run new wires, so the new amp connects to the factory wires. Doing it that way you only cut in one spot and everything can just be plugged back in later assuming you spade or bullet connectors. Part of why I picked that spot in the photo is because it's close to my amp, but also you have a lot of room where that center trim piece is to run the wires to under the seat. If you were going to mount your amp under the back seat. Then you could just splice the wires right there close to the bose amp. But if it's back there and your adding tweeters to the dash then you would have to run those wires all the way to the front.

 

[landpilot]

My subwoofer showed up yesterday, so I'll probably start my speaker swap either this weekend or early next week.

 

[8ball_99]

My subwoofer showed up yesterday, so I'll probably start my speaker swap either this weekend or early next week.

What Sub did you go with?

 

[landpilot]

What Sub did you go with?

Just the factory Kicker sub. I’m going to start with the speaker replacement and see how that goes. Next step will probably be a DSP/Amp like what you have. I wish NavTV would release their signal processor for our trucks to clean up the signal but I’m not going to let that slow me down. If I go with a DSP, I’m going to build a custom connector for the speaker wires so I can return it to stock if I need to or swap in something else in the future (most likely the latter lol)