Steve Deckert
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Today I completed the installation of the speakers. A simple pair of 6x9's in the rear deck. To ensure it would sound decent I made some modifications I thought some of you might find interesting. Since the rear package tray is steel with places for 6 x 9 speakers, I removed the 6 x 9 mounts and surrounding steel. Picture a pair of 10 inch holes in the rear steel deck. Then I dampened it with felt and spray adhesive and cut a plastic deck plate the entire size of the rear deck from 1/4 inch material and floated it in there with no fasteners of any kind. It simply locks into place under the felt lined lips around it's circumference. This plastic is soft and transfers almost no vibration compared to wood or steel. And it's floating. And the 6x9's are glued to it via a bed of silicon and no screws were used. The 6 x 9's chosen were low mass, far less than the 1/4 inch thick new package tray.
The 6 x 9's were a fun find. I have two routes I can go... high power or lower power. For high power, the ideal is a thick clear poly cone woofer and post mounted soft dome tweeter built like the one in a hifi speaker. For low power, a duo-cone with a cloth surround, pulp cone, light surround and petite voice coil in a small magnet. 92dB efficiency with 1 watt comes from the low mass and and 32Hz from the high compliance. The result is a crossover less full range speaker with low mass that has great detail and textures just like the stuff I listen to here at Decware.
Ironically, when you research 6x9's they range from $1200.00 on down. Once you get below 300.00 they are all junk until you get all the way down to the very bottom, a vintage 1972 pair of new old stock pioneer duo-cones for $25.00 The irony is that for sound quality at low to normal volumes these will remain untouched by even the 1200.00 models... I was damn lucky to find a pair. Back when I was younger and working as a hi-fi salesman, it never failed that the best sounding speaker in the entire wall of 6X9 car speakers was always the duo-cone 6x9's. They also were the loudest and had the best dynamic attack and the most midrange presence. No one ever bought them. Why... ...psyched out by the marketing and the placebo effect of pricing. A 4-way 6x9 with a midrange and two tweeters for $250 has to be superior to a $49 pair of cheap speakers with whizzer cones... right?
Funny, about 10.00 each... I would have given up to $400 for a pair... or more because you gotta have what you gotta have which is what works. Not to mention it's N.O.S. from 1972 just like the radio and the car.
I'll take some pictures tomorrow.
Steve
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