Tackett

I have been in need of componets for some time now and could never quite decide what to get. I bounced my decisions on a weekly basis. A trip to pied piper the other day with no intentions on buying anything, produced me walking out with a brand new type R componet set. I had never heard any of the alpine equpiment before and decided to take a chance. I took it home and immediatley tore into it. Out of the box impressions were good, the tweeters looked to be well made and were actually quite heavy for tweets. They are not silk tweets like I wanted and as such, I would expect some harsh treble from them, especially in a car designed like the Z is. The woofers impressed me the most out of the box however. The magnets were larger than I expected and the woofers were extremely heavier than I anticipated. The woofer material was solid, but gave enough to lead me to believe that they would produce some nice mid range bass that is lacking so badly in my current system. Install time was a pain, mainly due to the fact that this is my first componet install. All in all it took me around 10 hours to complete the install. Crossovers were mounted behind the seats in the floorboards, and the crossfire amp mounted in the trunk with the phoenix. So now the real challenge, the sound.
I turned off my sub to tweek the sound of the componets, and after shoving all the sound forward and off that crappy rear fill, I must say wow. I was extremley impressed with the amount of bass output by those little 6.5"s. It was not only pretty loud, but surprisingly accurate and clear. I did not buy the componets for low bass, so I set the headunit high pass filter to >160hz and let her rip. Volume was much louder and the midrange was a little choked off but this was due to the limitations of my HU not having a highpass cutoff point of >100hz. No fault of the componets. As I tweaked the volumes on both the amp and the headunit, I must say the things can get pretty blasted loud without distortion.
The tweeters were not quite as harsh as I expected them to be, but still a bit much, silk would have been much nicer. But as far as metal tweets go, these were probably the least ear peircing of all of the ones Ive heard. Treble notes are clear and load with almost NO distortion at midbass drown-out levels. very impressive.
Now, the only and ONLY real complaint that I have with the system lies with the crossovers. A little midbass frequency still leaks into the tweeters and causes them to distort BADLY at high volumes. This forces you to lower the midbass levels in the EQ causing the same problem I had initially which was...lacking midbass. However, the old system is a FAR CRY from being anywhere near the amount of mids offered with the alpines even with the necessary midcut. I would think that this problem could be remedied by using a seperate amplifier with a highpass filter built into it to run only the tweets.

All in all I give these componets a 7/10. They would be way higher in my book if it wasnt for the afore mentioned mid leak. So to be perfectly fair to the system it would have to be rated in a itemized fashion.

woofers 9/10
tweets 8/10
crossover 5/10
volume 7/10
value 6/10

You could probably pick up a much nicer set for about the same price as the alpines with a much nicer crossover, which is the systems only real limitation. Would I reccomend this set to someone? probably not. If you found a good deal on it, then go for it, but if you are paying asking price, I would go with something else. I will post pics of the install and of my custom sub box at some point if I can ever catch the digital camera floating around the office.

peace.

LS350Z

Nice review - I found many of the same complaints with the Rs in friends cars. Low Mids are there, not great, but there. Mids are alright, a little 'boosted' but there. Highs I'd say are good overall but overly transparent. Tonal accuracy through the range is okay and decent I guess. Off-axis response is okay on them - nothing earth shatterning and enough to do most consumers alright. Dynamics on them are below par and linearity is poor. I'd rank them much lower the you did out of 10 but I'm pretty harsh in my reviews. I think the average consumer would probably like these (as unfortunate as that is).

Tackett

Couldnt agree more. I gave them a little bit of a high review because of the fact that they dont cost an arm and a leg. Its a way to get a good sounding stereo without breaking the bank. However like I said, I would not reccomend them to anyone getting componets. I hate buying things on impulse, because if I had it to do over, I wouldnt have bought them, and I doubt I can return them at this point. My information was innacurate about one aspect however, they are silk tweets. As I said before though, the speakers and the tweets are decently built, its just the crossover that sucks.

isugoo

iTrader: (6)

i'm glad that i didn't get type-r.
type-r component speaker was in my list but end up buying boston acoustic sl60.
(my options were: type-r, eclispe component speaker, diamond d6 series, mbq reference series and boston accoustic sl60)