It was time. I have a Club trim which comes factory with Bose system and overall it sounded fine for a while. Recently I noticed I needed to turn the volume up a little more than I had. Also the speakers started to get very buzzy.
I thought that maybe the voices in the podcast I was listening two were just hitting a frequency the speakers didn’t like. But over time it began to get worse. When it started to show up when listening to music I figured it was time. I heard it only from the driver side. I thought it was coming from the tweeter so I unplugged that and when for a drive. Nope, that wasn’t it. It was the door speaker.
I decided to look for a replacement speaker. The best I could find for a used Bose speaker was $70, for one. Not the end of the world but I wanted to know if I could do better. I looked up the specs of the factory speakers to see if I could find a match. I found some threads and videos about some JBL speakers that were a popular upgrade for the ND Bose system but they were 2.5 – 3ohm speakers. The factory ones were 2ohm. I wanted to stay with the factory specs.
That brought me to a set of speakers from a brand called Powerbass. I had never heard of Powerbass. But they had an “OE” series of speakers running at 2ohm specifically to repalced factory Bose and other premium sound systems. They were also priced well. For the same $70 as the used Bose speaker, I could pick up a pair of these, the correct mounting brackets and wiring harnesses. Shipping included. I found this bundle on Crutchfield and decided I would give that a try.
The install was very easy. I mounted the speakers to the brackets and connected the harness adapter first to make it an easy plug and play installation. The next thing I needed to do was to remove the interior door card which was fairly easy. Just two screws hidden behind the pull handle and grab handle. The covers hiding them just pop off. After that it just unclips, starting from the bottom and working up.
Once the door car was off, it was just a matter of unbolting the old one and removing the harness from it.
I only heard an issue from the driver side speaker, but both of them were done. The paper cone was barely hanging on. Good thing I went for the pair of speakers instead of just the one used one.
The new speakers have a poly/carbon fiber cone so they should hold up much better than the old ones. They also have a built-in tweeter as opposed to just having a woofer. A little more on that later.
As I said, the install was just a direct bolt on and plug in. Nothing fancy or complicated.
The door card snapped back on and I was done! Time to turn on the radio and test them out. I probably should have done that first but I wanted to see if the door card was going to clear the new speakers. I didn’t want to have the trim the inner speaker grill on the door. Luckily it all fit up. Since the door card was nearly all the way on for testing the fit, I just went ahead and buttoned it all up.
Sound quality is good. Much better than the ripped speakers. But in general they sound similar to how it did before the speakers decided to eat themselves. Maybe a touch clearer or louder but hard to say. Since the new speakers also have built in tweeters, and the Bose system comes with separate tweeters in the pillars, I was getting a little too much high frequency tones coming at me. To be fair, it was great for podcasts but not so much for the Rock and Metal I listen to. Easy to fix though. I just reduced the treble by a little and increased the bass some until it sounded good to me. I don’t know if that is the optimal way to do things but I’m not an audiophile and I don’t really care about audio quality too much in this car. I just want it to work and sound OK.
For a quick repair this could not have gone better. The speakers dropped right in and worked right out of the box. I’ve lived with the buzzing for about two months now but as this is just a weekend fun car, it hasn’t really bothered me all too much. But I’m about to embark on a five-hour road trip. I needed to address it.
Thank you for reading and I’ll see you in the next one!
