ready made speaker mount adapters for 2012 Prius?

In high school I worked as a car stereo installer... And yes it's easy to screw up a nice car... But drilling holes vs. not drilling holes is not as important as how it looks in the end... My experience is that if it's easy and it doesn't require drilling or any customization it usually looks clunky and amateurish... Besides... the best way to improve sound quality isn't putting in a bigger speaker, it's putting in a bigger amplifier!

 

FWIW, the Alpine R Series 6.5" coax fits the rear door using the included adapter ring. The Alpine R Series 6.5" component system woofer fits the front door using the Scoche adapter with minor modifications, and the tweeter can be mounted in the dash squawker area by either cutting out the existing speaker and using it as a mount, or fabricating your own from the attached template.

 

looking for something like this?
Amazon.com: Metra 82-6901 5-1/4-Inch or 6-1/2-Inch Speaker to 6 x 9-Inch Mounting Hole Adapters: Car Electronics

 

If you really want to get your money's worth on a car stereo don't waste it on upgrading the existing stereo. Having worked in the car stereo business I abhor their price gouging and crap-quality sound gear. The only reason they get away with it is because a moving car is not quiet enough to judge good sound quality and if you put speakers in an enclosed space like a car even the cheapest speakers will sound good as long as they have big amps to keep the signal strong.

If you ever have a chance to talk to a sound engineer ask them to explain the details of the differences between recording studio sound quality vs. car stereo sound quality.

Point being, if you really want to sink $2k on a quality sound system for your car then keep your stock stereo for it's radio and drop in some full-size pro audio you can plug a CD player or phone into.

For example in the picture below is a pro-audio powered sub and two powered speakers along with a rack mount DBX sub-synth and rack mount dual 31 band EQ, which is all connected to an auxiliary battery and two 750 watt power inverters.

Point being, signal to noise ratio at high volume on pro-audio is light years ahead of even the most expensive car stereos. Also the advantage of stepping up to pro-audio is that at any moment you can can pull the gear out of the car and have an instant dance party with speakers capable of 120+ decibels (one below is good for a crowd of up to 200 people).

 

Any decent brand of cheap amp on ebay which significantly raises wattage going to each speaker is definitely the sweet spot.

 

I have crutchfield adapters for the front and rear doors. They are made my metra or scosche, I forgot which.
They fit, but drilling is required. In addition, there will be gaps where the old speaker hole was.
I used packing tape to cover the gaps. I would like a perfect adapter, but it seems nobody makes one.
You can make one yourself, with wood or plastic, but it is a lot of effort.
If you really hate drilling holes in sheet metal, it might be worth it...

 

Yup, the second one.

Cannot answer that one definitively, as the shop that installed the sound-deadening also installed the speakers. They stated that the adapter fit just fine. As to whether the drilling was required in the adapter or the door frame, I don't believe that it really matters much.

I'd mentioned in a previous post that I overshot the mark on my install, and I would hope that some might learn from my experience that unless they need enough audio grunt to power a psy-ops campaign to compel a Central American dictator to run screaming from his compound to surrender, that the "sweet-spot" might be close to:

Sound Deadening Materials ~$700
Front Door/Squawker Component Replacements - Alpine SPR-60C ~ $170
Scoche 03 TYTA 6x9 Speaker Adapter ~ $20
Rear Door coaxial speakers - Alpine SPR-60 ~ $120
Sound Processor -JBL MS-8 ~ $470
300w Class D amp from pretty much any manufacturer to power the sub - ~$125
Subwoofer - Alpine SWR-T10 ~$290
Custom enclosure for the sub from ~$50 in materials to do it yourself, up to ~$280 for a really nice completed enclosure from Gen 3 Prius right Subwoofer Enclosure

No additional speaker adapters or wiring harnesses are necessary, or readily available as far as I can tell. Cutting and splicing factory wires is a very straightforward process.

In my opinion, this is the optimal investment of ~$2,200 to hit the inflection point of the cost/performance curve. You can spend more, but you will not get any improvement to the listening experience that your ears can perceive. Spend less, and you will notice a very slight drop in sound quality as you successively eliminate the sub and sub amp, MS-8 sound processor, rear, and then front speakers.
Whatever you do, do not skimp on sound deadening. If you only have $700 to spend, spend it all on sound deadening. It will do more to improve your sound experience than an equal amount spent on any other aspect of your sound system.

 

$2,200 for a car stereo that makes your license plate rattle? That's a great sweet spot if you're mostly deaf and are a poor judge of sound quality. Then again, most people with brand new cars would think this is a reasonable plan... To each their own suppose?

 

I made customer speaker mounts, 3/4" flat plywood, for my front door speakers, (mdl II 2012) and used the same holes mounts at the factory speakers did. I replace the front 6X9 with 6-1/2 Polks.

 

Ever try to bend 3/4' plywood?

 

3/4 plywood should last quite a while, I work with UHMW which is a high grade food plastic. someday I will replace the mounts with this material, but for now, it works fine. If I were to wash the inside of the door panel weekly I would worry more about the electronic items than a piece of plywood.

 

There are plenty of online guides that recommend specific wire gauges based on wattage (amps, actually) and run distances. As a basic guideline, I would recommend that if you will not be amplifying much more than the 20w per channel of a JBL MS-8 (and I cannot think of a good reason to do so), the stock wiring is fine. I ran 12 gauge throughout based on 100w peak per channel, but as my post pointed out, I'll never use even 1/10th of that power, even during peaks in the music. The maximum amperage peak I measured at a volume slightly louder than I can tolerate was around 6A, or 72 watts total. Making the very conservative estimate that the sub used half that power, each speaker channel probably peaked at around 9W.

Unless you are fairly deaf or soon want to be, you'll need modest amplification, and therefore modest wire gauge.

 

On amp gain, setting your car radio volume to say 2 out of 50 on a stock head unit. You should not really want to hear anything from the speakers, by 3 you should beable to slightly hear something. Too much gain, will allow sounds to be heard at the lowest setting on the HU, turning the volume to 1 and you can still hear music is not good. I have mine slightly audiable at 3-4. Nice and loud is like 40. 50 is just blasting the door panels, and that is from a 50w rms per channel.