Car front speakers in addition to fullrange back speakers

[Brett_val]

Hi guys,

I recently got a car and obviously planned on getting some good audio in there. It's a Fiat Punto (small car) and the only stock speakers are two small dashboard speakers right beneath the windshield, so I bought the following and installed it all in the back:

• Two Alpine SPG-69C3 3-way speakers, 90W RMS 350W peak
• Rockford Fosgate sub 400W (not sure if that's RMS or peak power since there's no packaging...)
• Kenwood 500W peak amp

(note that there's nothing installed in the front (yet))

It sounds really well and I like it a lot, but it's all coming from the back, while I am used to hearing music from up front. I really miss that, even though the sound coming from behind is really good.

I want to bring the whole soundstage more up-front, but I am unsure what kind of speakers I should get for the dashboard. They have to be quite small in order to fit (I think about 5cm, haven't measured it yet).

Small fullrange speakers may not be as good as the big ones in the back and ruin the whole setup.
Just tweeters may not provide enough frequencys to get the "up front"-sensation.
So I'm leaning towards midbass speakers (range of about 300Hz to about 10KHz), or is this a weird/bad idea?

Not sure if this makes any sense, maybe my thoughts are completely wrong, but I would like some advice before I go out and buy more stuff...

[CrowdAds]

[Brett_val]

I checked and it's a 3.5 inch 2-way 10watts pioneer speaker in the dashboard, seems quite a common size.
It seems that there are only fullrange speakers in that size, I can't find any midbass speakers at 3.5 inch... that kinda limits my choice

[Syndrome]

Get some 2-way 3.5 inch speakers for the front. You should be able to find some, if not then you could always go with the dash mount tweeters.

[IDvsEGO]

there are plenty of 3.5 in options out there. there are no "midbass" options because that size isn't big enough to have a midbass impact in a car environment.

[Brett_val]

Thanks you two, I guess I'm forced to have full range speakers up front. But that may actually be the best thing to do...

Oh another thing.. there's a warning message on the box saying that the "high performance tweeter" in the Alpine speakers may get damaged if you connect another tweeter in parallel, and since most 3,5 inch speakers are 2-way, should I take this warning seriously and put those 3.5 inches' on a different channel (which means I would have to get another amp for the sub)?
Or just connect the 3.5's in series with the Alpines and would it be fine this way? (but I wonder if my amp would like the ohms this way..)

Figured that the amp can do 8 ohms so that'll work. Think I'll obey the warning message and connect the 3.5s in series.

[IDvsEGO]

wiring front and rear on the same channel looses your fader controls. when you are dealing with speakers of such varying sizes that may be an issue. try it and see, you can always add an amp later if needed.