Stock Tweeter Mod - CHEAP

I'll start by giving credit to Steampunk for talking about the stock tweeters on the thread where he installed new Infinity tweeters. That is what sent me down this path.

I have a 2012 with the Infinity system and you guys are just going to have to fill in the blanks for Alpine systems or non upgraded systems (much more info below now).

UPDATE EDIT: This mod does not work on the BASE systems.

For the Infinity '07-'12 systems you use a 10.0uF 100v non polar radial capacitor.

For the '13-'14 Alpine systems, you use a 4.7uF 100v non polar radial capacitor.

The stock tweeter has a 3.3uf capacitor and measures at 3.4 ohms (1 of mine was 3.5). If you do the math on that (cheaty link here: Car Audio - Speaker Crossover Chart and Capacitance vs. Frequency Calculator(High-pass) ) you end up with a -3db point of 14171hz on a 6db per octave slope. Its a horrible crossover for a tweeter in a car where reaching freq of 15k are almost non existent anyways unless you have a super high end system and are using master recordings. The chart below shows how little happens above 15k.



I decided that I would remove the 3.3uf and put on a 10.0uf capacitor to get a -3db point of 4676hz which puts the slope beginning around 5k. I think these tweeters can handle those frequencies without too much trouble.

SO:

I stopped by Fry's electronics and picked up 2 non-polar 10.0uf 100v capacitors for a whopping $2.79. I told you it was CHEAP.



Then with a very small flat screwdriver, I removed the first tweeter from the tombstone.



Once I had the tweeter out of the tombstone, I removed the connector which is easy.



Then in to the house where it was COOL and began the capacitor swap. I don't have any pictures of the un-solder and re-solder due to using both hands and nobody was here to help. If you are mildly handy with a soldering iron this will be easy. Just do not overheat the terminals as voicecoil damage can occur.

I used a small needlenose pliers to assist with the removal on the first one... The second one I just cut off with small ***** and let the iron remove the leads. You can see the grey capacitor under the little plastic flap.

Here is the new cap installed on the tweeter. It is a little larger so I moved it over to the other side of the tweeter and soldered it in place.



Then I went back out and plugged it in and it goes right back in the tombstone with no issues.


So then the fun began... I checked it out myself and noticed a significant improvement in high frequency performance and female vocals were a lot better. So I brought my wife out and said "ok honey, One of these tweeters is not like the others, One of these tweeters just doesn't belong, Can you tell which tweeter is not like the other"... (ok, she's a school teacher). I gave her a blind listen (she didn't know which one I had done) with many different types of music and let her sit in both seats and she 100% accurately picked the modified tweeter side as sounding noticeably better. Even more so when using the balance control from left to right.

:awesome:

Sadly, this doesn't suddenly make your system sound like you have MB Quart's installed. But it took me all of 20 minutes including the time with her listening tests.

We did go for a ride and she came back and said wow... you should sell a kit online... Uh, no honey I will just show the community how to do it, because that's what we do. :beerdrinking: