I finally got some new speakers

I finally got around to replacing the speakers in my 2008 Pkg #2. I got my Prius back in March and got the pkg #2 thinking that the bluetooth wasn't worth $1500 extra. I knew I'd be replacing the speakers after I bought it.

I've been putting it off for a while now because I just don't enjoy tinkering with cars as much as I used to. Circuit City had a pretty decent deal on some Polk Audio speakers though and I ended up buying them on Friday. I got some 6501's for the front and a pair of 651's for the back.

Today, I finally succumbed to the urge to install them after looking at them on my desk for three days. I was surprised that it only took me about 4 hours start to finish. That included fashioning mounting brackets from MDF and auditioning the system with several of my favorite titles

Was the upgrade worth it? Heck yeah! The bass is much more punchy now and the motorboating is noticeable absent (woohoo!). I went with the polk audio's because of the 92db sensitivity. I don't think I'm going to need an amp with these afterall. If I had to do it over again, I probably would have looked for some premade mounting brackets, but that's about it.

Kudo's to Sparky for having a great photographic guide on removing the door panels. Having that guide probably saved me an hour or two alone.

...oh and can you believe how small the magnets are on the stock speakers!

 

yep, in the rear, I just replaced the door speakers with coaxial ones. I don't have anyone riding in the back normally to justify the extra cost of the components ($75 vs $150).....and really, the coaxials are still quite an upgrade from the factory non-coax speaker.


In the front, I replaced both the door speakers and the tweeters. The tweeters were a little larger than the factory ones so I had to hollow out the space a little. It was well worth it to replace the tweeters.

Unfortunately, I've got some kind of vibration coming from the passenger front door. Looking back, I probably should have put some kind of dampening material in the door. Luckily, that can probably be done in about 15 minutes now that I know how easy it is to remove the panels.

 

The coaxials are miles better than the factory speakers in that the factory ones aren't even coaxials. The back factory speakers seemed like they tried to compensate for the lack of a tweeter by pushing out more midrange.

I don't think you could go wrong putting components in the back. I just don't know how much someone in the driver's seat would benefit from them.