Here is a shot of the head unit and the amp install in my roadster. I went with this head unit due to the absolutely perfect match in terms of colors and overall design with the Z interior. Speakers are Focal 165K2P front/165CV rear -all behind the stock grills. Sub is a 10" JL W3v2 in a custom box in the stock sub location. All powered by a JL 500/5 amp. The logos over the amp are "floating" between two pieces of plexiglass sitting under and over a cut-out in the black plastic spare tire cover. It isn't some kind of mega-system, but does have beautiful, clean looks, high quality sound and very importantly (to me) no weight gain!!!!

 

I'm not too crazy about those HU's, but it is a clean install. Did you do the amp install?

 

Yeah, clean instal bro!

 

I did almost the whole amp install. I built/painted the mounting box which is secured into the spare tire mounting hole using the spare tire bolt itself. I also constructed the plexiglass cover, cut and velcro'd the carpeting in place and mounted the lights. The amp itself was put into place by the installer who did everything else.

Interesting about your comment with regards to the head unit. For me, I knew I HAD TO have one the instant I first saw one!!!!

 

god damn.

what the hell is the brand of your amp?

is it focal, nismo, or JL?

 

how about ur HU what's the brand???

 

thats sony i think.

 

nice setup btw. very nice.

 

very nice. Same exact speaker setup as mine. Focal's kick a$$!

 

Hey Speed, I've got the K2p's as well--I've read people who are emphatic about not needing rears w/ these speakers. Being as doubtful as I am though, I had thought about the 165 CV's for the rear and powering them w/ the headunit (960MP). What's your opinion on the sound w/ the CV's?

 

yeh dude, what unit is that !?!

 

why did you cover up the amp with the stickers? JL amps look so nice without anything on them!

 

LOL!!!!! I didn't cover it with stickers. As I said in my original post, the logos are sitting between two pieces of plexiglass which are about 1.5" above the top of the amp. They look "suspended" in mid air. It's kinda cool (to me). Hard to capture this three-dimensionality in a 2-D pic.

 

Sony WX7700-MDX. Special order from Japan. You can get it through Audiocubes.com or Meltingpot.com. And yes, all the graphics are in English, not Japanese. Owner's manual was Japanese only, but it wasn't too hard to figure it all out.

 

Nice, you need to get a night shot of the Headunit, that is when it looks really NICE and still stock, like it came with the car!

nice install, not over the top, just nice!

 

While you can definitely do with two speakers, having four definitely gives you a much more full, rich sound. In my mind, it isn't subtle either, it is a big difference. Plus my Sony WX7700-MDX uses all four speakers for DSP effects. The JL 500/5 works well because it delivers 100 watts to each front speaker and 25 watts to each rear, so the soundstage is still maintained from the front, but the rear is still CLEARLY contributing. I would definitely recommend rears, and the CV's work great. They don't have the ultra-clear, air-like imaging of the K2P's, (you know what I mean)but you don't want that from the rears as that would disrupt your soundstage.

 

Looks very nice.

Can we see a pic of your subwoofer location?

 

Sub box needed a slight revision for perfect fitment, so it's out right now. Building a properly sized custom box in the stock location that is removeable is not s simple task. We used a combo of board and fiberglass. It is somewhat of a "free-form" shape to which the volume of the box had to be optimized. The angle of the sub also had to be considered given the significant added depth over the stock POS sub. I will post pics of when it is back in. My installer is still uncertain of whether or not he wants pics of the sub box itself posted, since it was something he thought a lot about and is concerned over people simply copying his idea.

 

Hey Speed, one last question: you say you have 25W going to the rears and that's enough? Curious again and want to do this right as long as my installer's going to be doing the project, he might as well do it all. Thanks!

 

okay....my 10" JL W3v2 fitted perfectly into the metal plate that housed the stock Bose sub. We used this same metal plate as the front of the sub box. The sides, and bottom of the sub box were made of high density particle board. The top and rear were of fiberglass.

The bottom was a bit of a challenge. I needed a sub box that could be removed easily, if necessary, since the fuel pump and other mechanicals are accessed through this location. Due to the angle of the front metal plate, the magnet of the JL sub wouldn't clear the bottom of the sub box, so we ended up cutting a U-shaped hole on the bottom of the box, then building a free form fiberglass "cup" the allowed the magnet to fit, but also didn't protude lower than the bottom edge of the stock metal mounting plate in front. Everything was then nicely sealed up and the sub box was slid into the stock sub location with the factory sub grill over it.

I didn't get a chance to get a pic in the time the the box was finished and before it was installed into the car, and there really is no point to it now, since all it would show is the stock metal mounting face with a JL sub in place of the stock Bose sub.

The real point here is that you can build a box to go in the factory location using the factory metal mounting plate as the front of the box. The sound is great. Very clean, tight, no rattles whatsoever. After some negatives I had heard about putting a box in this location, I was very pleasantly surprised. There is more bass than I know what to do with!!! Infact, I have turned the sub gain DOWN from it's neutral setting using a 78Hz low pass filter. Since I have a roadster, this was really the only possible location and it works great. I think it would work as well in the coupe, for those of you where space is a concern. Of course, the under-the-strut bar sub location does lend itself to some killer-looking installs, but in terms of sound, the stock location is just fine.