Tweeter questions

[davebutch]

Shortly after buying my 2005 EXL new, I replaced the horrible Alpine door speakers with Infinity's. The sound improved 100%. Since then, I've become dissatisfied with the head unit, and recently replaced it with a Kenwood Excelon unit. Again, the sound improved 100% (I'm not a mathemetician).

I've read about every post in this forum, and I've noticed that several guys disconnect the stock tweeters when they do audio upgrades. I'm wondering why? Also, several guys replace the stock tweeters with aftermarket ones. Are the aftermarket tweeters that much better?

[pilot_rave]

Main reason to disconnect them are their location/proximity to the windshield - sound waves bounce erratically from there; the ones in the doors built into your Infinity speakers are 1) higher quality material and 2) better positioned than the front dash ones.
You may leave them it will not do much harm but try disconnecting them (very easy to do) and see if you can hear any difference.

[oejeffrey]

As far as removing or replacing the tweeters upfront by the glass I would not even worry about that. Eventually you will have to sell the car and if you take your tweeters out of your pilot then having to go back and replace them will be a unnecessary pain. My factory tweets are still in place and will stay there. They are horribly placed anyway. If you were to do a search of high end car audio systems you would see A LOT of kick panels. Even Crutchfield has kick panels. Look how close the tweeters are to the woofers. Less than a foot. Honda decided to place the tweeters up near a large piece of highly reflective glass that showers the front passengers with undirected sound. If you click on my post about my system ( Start of a System ( with Pics ) ) you would get the idea of where my tweeters are posted. Charly has his tweets on the sail panels. Just don't worry about the factory tweeters...they are useless anyway.

[davebutch]

Thanks, guys. I may try disconnecting them and see if there is a noticeable difference, as RAVE suggested. I have a set of Kenwood tweeters left over from a previous vehicle/mod, but I'd just as soon leave them in the box for now. Getting lazy in my old age, I guess.

[Groundpound4200]

I did mine like this, pretty simple and worked out great.

[oejeffrey]

Those sail panels are great places to put tweeters !!! If you ever blow one they are in a place that are easy to get to and easy to swap out !!!

[riccoh]

just wondering about the same issues with the pilot dash tweeters. I know my Denali has the same setup and an acustic label on the windshield that makes a difference between the 2 vehicles.

[oejeffrey]

Bottom line is the factory Tweets have quality issues as well as horrible placement. New tweets are not all that expensive even with custom install. The newer tweeters out there,focal,CDT,Hertz just make the factory stuff sound like garbage.

[tomyo10]

I replaced my factory door speakers with some Polk db-650s. They sounded really good after the install, but sounded even better after I disconnected the tweeters.