Headrest speakers?

[GGR]

The two speakers I have in the footwells are having a hard time when I'm driving top down or with an open window on the highway. I've first been thinking of adding more powerful speakers on the back shelves, but I don't want to integrate then in the shelves or the rear firewall. Having them in boxes sitting on the shelves would avoid modifications but would not look that good and would impede using that area to drop luggage.

Some Miatas and other more recent convertibles have speakers in the headrests. Did anyone here tried to fit speakers in the headrests? I made a search which returned nothing. Headrests are easily interchangeable so the car could easily be returned to original. I'm wondering if the sound would make it through the leather of if I would need to make small holes in the headrest covers?

Any experience or ideas to help me in this is welcome!

[hauser]

Give Gernold a call.  He can set you up with a state of the art sound system.  Not Cheap but sounds so good!

[Rolf-Dieter ✝︎]

I've used my iPad headset for a few miles when driving conditions allowed to do so. It would be nice if Gernold could post some details here of the sound system you mentioned hauser.

[GGR]

Give Gernold a call.  He can set you up with a state of the art sound system.  Not Cheap but sounds so good!

Thanks! However doing it myself is part of the pleasure!

I have found this link about an install on an earlier Miata which is quite interesting. Apparently speakers are powerful enough for the sound to go through the leather, so no aspect alteration would be needed: http://www.miata.net/garage/headrest.html

There would also be the possibility to use only one double voice coil speaker per headrest, so as to keep the stereo connection with a simpler install: http://www.retrosoundusa.com/products/details/id/173

The result would be similar to this, before fitting the leather cover back onto it :



I have a spare pair of headrests, I may take them apart and see which approach would be best given shape, size etc.

[jameshoward]

All you need is an amplifier and some more powerful speakers. I have 2 speakers in the footwell, originally fitted after market! They have been there for a long time. I replaced them with ones of the same size but with a far greater handling capacity. I put an amp under the drivers seat and ran an iPod connector from the back of the Becker radio. It's a great setup and perfectly loud enough for the car with the roof down at speed.

[GGR]

Fitting bigger speakers in the foot-wells would mean cutting out some metal behind the cardboards, or fitting some boxes of some sort, I'm not sure it would look that great. Would you mind posting some pictures of your set-up? What size are your speakers?

[rutger kohler]

Hi there, re the miata (MX5 in NZ) headrest speakers, the love of my wife's life is a low mileage 1990 citation model MX5.  The head rest speakers blew out quite a few years ago and I found much more powerful ones with resistors fitted in line, by googling mx5 headrest speakers.  They worked really well, so if you are tempted to go for the headrest idea I would go with the newer ones rather than MX5 (Miata) genuine speakers.  Sorry I can't remember the details of where to get them.

[GGR]

Thanks. Yes, I read about the replacement speakers for the Miata. This is one avenue. The other avenue would be the Retrosound 4x8 dual voice speakers. They have the same shape as the ones for the dash and their wiring is stereo. This would allow fitting only one speaker in each headrest. However, they may be too powerful for a headrest application. I need to contact a guy in Florida who specializes in Miata sound systems and ask him his opinion. I took a spare headrest I have apart, and both approaches (two small 3.5" speakers or one bigger dual voice 4 x 8 speaker) would be possible, though, due to the shape of the metallic structure that needs to be modified, fitting only one bigger speaker would be easier. It's a shame that the smallest dual voice speakers I found are whether round 6.5" (too big) or 4x8 (which would fit). Smaller dual voice speakers would have been ideal.

[hauser]

Here are the speakers that I mentioned.

http://www.sl113.org/forums/index.php?topic=8344.0

[jameshoward]

GGR,

Sorry for not replying. I'm travelling at the mo and so have little/no internet connection. I'm 98% certain my speakers are 6" round, cut into the board in the footwell. I made no additional cuts. They were Sony's originally, but I replaced them with some very modern speakers designed to be amp driver. They were 2 way. I also put in tiny tweeters. I will take a picture for you and post it. Because of the size of the Pagoda footwell, you don't notice the speakers at all. I kept the original square sony grills and just put the new speakers behind. The only thing that sort of stands out is the tweeters and that's because I didn't think to paint the tweeter screens before I put the tweeters in. Either way, I'm sure that the effect is less notable than headrest speakers. You also have to consider that headrest speakers will be - I think - very bad for your hearing and would make it very hard to hold a conversation. If you care that much about the mix of wind noise and the effect it has on your music, how about just wearing ear phones? I really do think that headrest speakers will do significant damage to your hearing (and do have a teensy weensy bit of a background on the impact of noise levels on hearing issue...)

I'll post a pic as soon as poss.

JH

[GGR]

Thanks James. I'm curious to see the pictures.

[jameshoward]

You'll need to stay curious for just a little longer, but I will be back at some point with the pics. I thought I had some on my hard drive; alas not.

[jameshoward]

Ta da!!

I knew I'd put something on here. Second photo near the beginning of the post, in a reply by me.

http://www.sl113.org/forums/index.php?topic=7823.0