The Basics of Car Audio Speaker Replacement

[EricTheCarGuy]

Car audio is not my area of expertise but I have installed a few systems over the years. In this video I share some tips that I’ve learned over the years to make speaker installation easier and more effective. Feel free to add your input on speaker and car audio installation tips and tricks.

Topic

[Aaron]

I understand the Vigor is a not a car you want to put a bunch of money into but rather than cutting off the factory speaker I’d suggest people get the correct corresponding speaker wiring adapter for their vehicle. That way the factory plugs are maintained, no semi-permanent modification to the wiring is performed and there’s no way to mess up polarity.

For instance Metra 72-7800 looks like it would have been the correct part for the Vigor from all the fit guide data I’ve been able to find. Amazon has them for about $6 for a pair. It would have lessened the install time, made it a bit more fool proof as far as polarity goes and you would have had less wire to have to put back into the door cavity.

Just my $0.02

[Peter]

Cool video! I’ve also done a few of these car audio upgrades/repairs, but the only thing I might have done differently with this repair would be to cut the speaker pigtale off of the junk speaker and reuse it with the new speaker (assuming the wires were in good shape).

[Luke]

Thanks for the video, in my first car I changed the stereo and speakers, added an amp and 2 14″ sub woofers!!! All that costed around $1500 and the car only costed $500!!!!

[EricTheCarGuy]

For those that suggest that I remove the connectors from the old speakers and reuse them. I didn’t do it because the connector was a part of the speaker and it would have been more difficult to try and remove that over what I did. I went for simplicity. Also, I’d still have to wire the connectors to the new speakers which would have left me with 2 connectors. 2 connectors means that there’s more potential for failure. What I did was clean, and it worked awesome. Lastly, I don’t know why anyone would go back to the stock speakers because to be honest, they had much to be desired, even new.

[Aaron]

Yeah pulling those connectors off the old speakers wouldn’t be the correct way to go I agree.
Some people take cars back to stock prior to selling/trading the car in. While I understand that’s not really a concern with the Vigor it’s one of the reasons why I suggest normal consumers buy the appropriate speaker wiring adapter. You had no issues cutting the plugs off but you also have no intention of going back to stock, had totally shot 21 yr old speakers and also were replacing all of them so you had the ability to wire all of them so they were in phase.

That’s not always the same situation as all of your viewers; some of them might just want better sound but have ok stock speakers, might not be doing all of them so they could wire the fronts out of phase with the rears or some might not even be comfortable soldering. I still say that for the majority of people for $12 or so for all 4 speakers the wiring harness adapters are the way to go.

Here’s what those look like for the older Honda/Acura vehicles; you can see where they plug into the factory speaker connection and then give you the spade connectors for the speakers.

[Brian]

I never realized polarity was so important. Good to know. I saw some suggest that you could use a battery to find positive side of the speaker, cool tip. Couldn’t you use a powerprobe or something to find the positive wire from the car? Thanks for the videos! Brian

[Paul]

I think that audio signal can swing both positive and negative – current flows in one direction to push the cone and current flows in the opposite direction to pull the cone. So, it might be difficult to measure with a power probe and probably would require an oscilloscope.

Edit: You might be able to use a diode and voltmeter/probe, or even an LED, to determine which terminal outputs a positive voltage and which one outputs a negative voltage. I could also be completely wrong here.

However, if the speaker terminals are unmarked, the polarity of the speaker can be determined with a battery to see which way the cone moves when the voltage/current is applied.

As long as the same polarity convention is used for all of the speakers, the reulting sound will be in phase – i.e. all of the electromagnets push and pull in the same direction at the same time.

[EricTheCarGuy]

As for polarity it is recommended that the positive and negative be hooked up correctly for the best sound.

[Author]

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