**Warning** - Audiophiles and those who believe in doing things the right way should stop reading now, lest I offend your sensibilities with the following blasphemy:

Being relatively new to the Z and it's not-too-loved Bose stereo, I did a lot of searching and reading around the forums about it. I found myself in agreement with the general idea that it should simply be replaced.......however, if one were not inclined to immediately replace it, I wondered what could be done to it to make it sound better than it does.

Putting the quality and the specs of the system aside, one of the most glaring faults is the two rear speakers that fire directly into the back of the seats. While I understand that rears are merely fill that should contribute to an image positioned toward the front, these poor Bose woofers are doomed where they sit. One fix is a speaker upgrade that can overcome the cruddy location (with new amps, of course). Another is to delete those and relocate them to a box or pod further back to let the sound from them open up some.

So how can the sound quality be improved for $20? Add some tweets to the rear. This is far from a solution, and it breaks a lot of the audio rules and givens, but it does improve the sound of your Bose system for $20. Web searching will tell you that this, for the most part, shouldn't be done for a number of good reasons.

The problem with adding tweeters is controlling the level and getting them to play nice with the other speakers......this is further complicated by the proprietary nature of the Bose gear already in the car. I decided to experiment with it. I rolled the dice on a pair of Lanzar DCT 1" silk dome tweeters. I went with 1" instead of 1/2" for a warmer sound, and avoided metal and piezo to keep it from sounding harsh.

I mounted them to the crossbar in the rear hatch area so that both could be heard by either driver or passenger. I wired them in with the original Bose rear speakers, which I kept functional. These tweeters come with a crossover box you wire up inline so you don't have to worry about low signals getting to them. The big question was how loud they would be in relation to the rest of the system, since their volume can really only be adjusted via the treble control on the head unit (remember, adding pots and other amps would void the $20 bargain). I can only attest to the satisfactory volume level that these particular tweeters have when connected to the rears, not any others.

They sound good. It's a significant improvement over the muddy and muffled sound that was coming from the rear. They are not harsh sounding at all and seem to play nice with everything else in the car.

One plus is that you are not out anything if you decide to upgrade gear later.....you can always wire them into whatever new amp you get.

That is my small contribution to the topic of the Bose stereo in the 350Z. If you are into high-end gear, competition, reference audio, or the like, you'll rightfully dismiss the above. However, if you are an average guy who just wants that Bose stereo to sound a little better, here's your ticket.....BTW, I did that fix where you take apart the subwoofer amp and wedge something between the case and the board, and it works like a champ now.

Here's the tweeters, widely available online for about $20:



Here's how they look:

 

Awesome post up man. Wish I could hear the difference. The person who you describe to fit this mod is me.

 

Enjoy the better sound till you are ready to dump the whole Bose .They look good too. Nicely taken pic

 

Do you have more explicit instructions for hooking these tweeters up?

 

Yes. In order to get to the wiring harness that feeds the rear speakers you first need to remove the inside rear quarter panels. That is done by popping off the door sill trim pieces, then pulling the door seal away from the B-pillar, then working the panel snaps loose until the whole quarter panel comes out. Do this for both sides.

Next, remove the carpet for the hatch area. You'll see a line of buttons across the lower rear of the panel behind the speaker enclosure. These buttons secure the panel to the floor of the hatch area. Pop them out, then lift that rectangular piece up and out of the way.

That whole curvy speaker pod piece will also lift out after you carefully yank on it to disengage the body clips holding it in. By removing it you now have full access to the rear speakers. I did this to make sure I was tapping into the correct L/R and +/- wires for my tweeters. If you are slick with wiring diagrams, you can skip all the above and tap into the wiring harness as it runs along the drivers side door and into the drivers side of the rear speaker enclosure. I took the extra steps to hit the right wires because I couldn't find a wiring diagram that seemed consistent. Once you access the main rear speakers, you'll see a sticker on the back of each driver that indicates which is + and which is -.

Identify your + and - wires that go the main rear speakers and tap into them. Give yourself about two feet of wire for each tweeter, run the wires cleanly along the panel lines into the hatch area, and reinstall all the panels you removed earlier.

Route the wires back toward the crossmember on the left and right sides. Each tweeter has a small crossover box that will hide nicely behind the rearmost part of the inner quarter panel you opened up earlier. I tapped two small holes to mount the tweeter brackets, then snapped them in while tucking the extra wire away behind the panel.

You could, of course, vary the installation. The nice thing about leaving yourself some extra wire length is that even after you've buttoned the interior back up, you could experiment with the placement of the tweeters and perhaps find a location that better suits you. I felt that their placement on the crossmember was appropriate because it would allow me to hear both tweeters and therefore provide some desperately need spacial imaging. Even though, technically, there's an issue with time delay and staging to the front, the benefits to a sorry rear half outweigh any detriment to the whole.

 

Very cool. Thanks man. I have a G35 and am going to think about doing this.

 

Thanks for a great heads up and tutorial on this "bargain".
I can attest to the addition of a small surface mount tweeter as
doing wonders for your audio.I had another vehicle with a set up
similar to the Z.I added small tweeters and the sound definition
was greatly improved.Ironically,for many(me included),the labor
to take everything apart and button it back up gives me a headache.
The "time" expense out weighs the benifit unless you are a true
audiophile...which I'm not.

 

Thanks for the write up. Just bought mine and may try this someday.

 

It would probably be easier to tap them from the amp in the hatch area
In the link to Z with Bose, the first set (white plugs ) are as they come from the HU
The next set (amp wiring) is as they come from the Amp and that is where you need to tap
http://crutchfield.custhelp.com/app/...0bose%20wiring

 

I wonder how this would work on a non-bose setup...

 

All you need is $20 and some hours of fun time.

 

Good call beezee.......that would cut quite a bit of time out of this install.

 

I honestly don't understand tweeters.
I spent a hefty amount on my audio system and didn't bother with the tweeters. I connected the stock ones for a bit but disconnected shortly after because I didn't hear a difference. I then bought the $10 tweeters but again, after install didn't hear a difference so I took em out and returned them.

Mind explaining to me what tweeters do, which tweeters to buy and where the best place to install them is? Any insight would be awesome

 

Tweeters as a component cover the high end of the music....they are what give the sound a crisp edge and are very important to creating an "image" or "sound stage" that convinces the listener in a car that they are sitting in front of a stage listening to live music.

There are purists who eschew drivers/speakers that do anything other than faithfully reproduce the sound. In an ideal listening environment, you can let the speakers do more interacting with a properly set up room to faithfully recreate the music. Two very simple speakers can do it in a proper room.....two very simple speakers in a car with the sound bouncing off glass, plastic and carpet? Not so much.

Your favorite tune was more than likely not recorded with road noise and twin-turbos in the background. It was likely mastered in a studio where they did not hide the speakers behind plastic pillars or down by their feet. This is why you'll see guys put a lot into multiple transducers, amps, crossover networks, etc. for the purpose of overcoming all the obstacles and interferences in a car.

In your case, maybe you spent enough coin on high quality gear that sounds great. Maybe your install overcame a lot of the above-listed variables.

Also, remember that most people have had their idea of "good sound" influenced over their lives by FM radio and over-produced music......most folks are very unaware of what a "flat" response is in a sound system and, as such, are not very impressed when they hear one. In our case, the Bose system was touted as being able to reproduce music faithfully. Over the years, Bose has done this with proprietary drivers and a bit more processing than their stated end-goal would suggest. The attempt simply fell flat in this application, and was further hindered by questionable component quality and a garbage FM receiver.

I think most of the folks here will ultimately tell you the same thing: Put into your car what sounds good to you, and leave it at that.

 

Thank you for that, I just realized on my set up the speakers came with tweeters on them. Most likely why I figured I didn't need them, they already had them lol

 

lol....and, of course, there's that explanation too.