It is such a pleasure to be able to bestow upon friends

Jstas

high fidelity stereo!

The Jeep is FINALLY HOOKED UP!

Got some tweaks to do and some pictures to take. I'll write more later.

audiobliss

I'm looking forward to hearing about it and seeing some pics.

Jstas

Well, now that I am in work, I'll waste some time writing here.

Got the stereo in to the Jeep. It has some really wild imaging because the inside of a Jeep is not all that spacious and it doesn't have many places to hook up speakers. The equipment list is as follows:

Signal Source:
Kenwood Excelon KDC-X879

Amplification:
Hifonics Zeus ZX4400 (4 channel)
Hifonics Nemesis NX750D (mono channel)

Speakers:
Polk Audio MMC460 (front)
Polk Audio MMC525 (rear)
Polk Audio MM2084DVC (Subs -- pair)

All wiring is by Streetwires and/or Esoteric Audio.

That's teh equipment list. The sub enclosures are these QuadPod deals from Qudratec. I was leary about them at first but they are pretty stout and don't take up so much room that the space behind the rear seat is unuseable. Only issue was that they were .55 cu. ft. and we needed .35 so we did some "modification". We took expanding foam and filled the upper section of the box with foam. Let it expand and cut out the stuff we didn't want. It stiffened up the box and filled in the extra space. After wiring the subs up, I stuffed with polyfil and loaded the drivers.

The amps are mounted on the bottom of the rear seat to a board that was secured to the lower frame of the seat. The seat was too low to mount the amps under it easily so my friend got 2 inch pipe and cut four 5" sections of it, drilled holes and mounted the seat through the pipes to raise it 2 inches. This is good because adults can now sit in the backseat without too many problems.

Stuff didn't go as easy as I had hoped and I didn't have the kind of time I wanted to spend on it. Overall though, the install went well. The stereo sounds excellent! The install is clean and literally invisible. We still need to snag some grilles for the subs and paint the 5.25" speaker grilles black. The amps tuck neatly away under the rear seat when it is down but he still retains 75% of his useable space back there thanks to the creative sub enclosures and amp mounting.

I didn't get too many pictures but he is working all weekend. Next Monday, I am going to snag pictures for sure because this install was pretty creative!

So he has about 1190 peak watts right now and something like 700 RMS across the entire system. I was actually lucky with some cosmetic things. All his wires match. I used a blue and silver amp wiring kit because it wouldn't be as obvious as red and black in a black Jeep. I also used Streetwires 12 guage speaker wire all around, the twisted kind with silver and blue insulation. The Streetwires ZeroNoise 2.0's are ALSO silver and black and I used Streetwires gold plated distro blocks. It's all the same color and the wire management is a tad sloppy in some spots but it was space constraints that made me have to do it that way unfortunatly. The only piece of wiring that is not Streetwires is a MonsterCable ANL fuse block under the hood.

Initial impressions are mixed but I have not had time to really mess with settings. I nee to adjust things better without the owner futzing around with controls when I walk back to the amps to set gains and crossover points! The imaging is wild though! It hovers right around your head so your ears feel like they are inside the sound stage! I think I can push it forward a bit and ceter it by re-aiming the tweeters but honestly, it's right where I wanted it. He'll be able to hear it without a problem while driving with the top down. You can't localize ANY sound let alone the bass. Everything blands in and you actually have to move your head infront of the speakers to hear what is coming from each one. While the sound stage is not infront where most cars have it, it is very accurate. It seems as iff the sound is emminating from the center of the Jeep, right at ear level. It is impossible to localize any speaker from the front driver or passenger seat and honestly, that is what any sound stage is going for.

The subs, so far, are what I expected. The problem is, they have reached my expectations at half the potential already. The bass is smooth, very smooth. It's tight and accurate and when I can get the speakers secured properly, They will be even better! The owner was happy with just leaving the gain level where it was as a permanent setting. I think it will change his mind after the break-in period is up. Overall though, those little MOMO subs are quite impressive! I can't wait to jack the gains up to where they should be and see what it can do!

The last thing I will mention before I get pictures is that those amps are no where near thier limit! That NX750D is running at 1 ohm and pushing 4 voice coils and didn't even get hot after an hour worth of listening time. Granted, the gains are not set where they should be but it is evident that there is abundant power! The Zeus amp is having no problems pushing the full range drivers either. The fronts are crossover at about 80 Hz, the rears are around 60 and the subs are on a low-pass at about 80-100 Hz. Like I said, I have to fiddle and fine tune. The sound is strong and clean and I pushed it to full volume with no break-up, distortion or other coloring what so ever. I am very impressed with the Nemesis series of amps and now that I have heard the MOMO speakers in an installation, I am more than pleased with them!

Good on you Polk Audio! The MOMO Carbon series is a line of speakers worth of the Polk Audio name!

Pictures will follow soon!

Jstas

Some issues that bugged me about the install.

The 4x6's were not an "easy-fit" for the Jeep like everyone, including Polk Audio, says. We had to fabricate some mounting plates from MDF to properly secure them in the stock locations.

The tweeters in the 5.25" speakers are defintly moveable and they do stay put. However, trying to actually move them is tough and hard to do without denting the little grilles. I did it but it was a very tense thing to do.

The leads on the subs had these spring loaded terminals where where nice. My problem with them is that the holes should be larger on the DVC subs. We had a rough time fitting two 12 guage leads into the contacts to wire the subs in parallel. I ended up wire nutting the 3 leads onto a short jumper for the other sub because if two barely fit, 3 were impossible.

The shanks on the screws for the subs are too long. They bottom out before the sub is mounted down tight unless you use spacers or the MOMO grilles. Now I understand that selling grilles is a good thing for Polk but honestly, the screw design sucks. We were going to use mesh grilles and cover them with black speaker cloth to better hide the subs. The two, bright aluminum orbs in the sea of black will attract attention. I wanted to hide them behind non-descript grilles but can't now. I need to use the MOMO grilles to have the spacer needed to mount the subs properly. All because the shanks on the screws are a 1/4 inch too long.

The crossovers on the 5.25 inch speaker have to be taken apart to see which wire goes to the tweeter and which one goes to the woofer. I wouldn't have a problem with that but when I took the cover off, I had to search for the markings. It was not readily apparent and I had to check several times that I was wiring it correctly. I ended up using tape to marke ends and that is OK but I think it would better to have them more clearly marked.

I realize that most of this stuff is petty little BS but these are the details that can make the difference between a good product and a great product. For a person as experienced as me, it's not an issue, just an annoyance. For someone else, it could be a show stopper. So I feel it necessary to mention these things because they are valid concerns and it is honest and good feedback. So I hope it's considered as that and I hope it helps Polk Audio build a better product!

I'm still glad that I chose Polk Audio for this job and the owner said several times that he was throughly impressed with not only my work but with the gear I chose for him and how well it worked together. He also said that the Polk speakers surprised him and he thought he was going to need 6.5 inch mid-basses to make up the difference between the 5.25's and the subs but they really don't. I think he wants to go for them anyway for the "bling factor" so Polk Audio should come out with MMC seperates so I can match up his entire stereo! *hint hint*

To the owner's credit though, he did help out alot and did alot of the work with the mounting brackets and seat spacers. He was totally lost when it came to hooking up the stereo components though and the power wires made him nervous too. He hooked a couple of head unit wires up goofy but I fixed them and caused my own problem too. But he caught my mistake and fixed it! So nobody's perfect! Then again, it was 4 am when I screwed it up and I was very, very tired.

exalted512

everything sounds good
did you go online to order everything or through a local dealer?
what was the total?
how do you like the excelon unit?
are there a lot of options to play with?
it took me like 10 minutes to read all of that...lol
glad to know you liked everything and that everything turned out pretty much the way you want it
have you tested it out with the top down yet?
-Cody

Jstas

He ordered everything from sounddomain.com and onlinecarstereo.com

onlinecarstereo.com was awesome to work with and sounddomain.com was good with fixing problems. Shame the problems were caused by them sending wrong parts. They did fix it all though.

He got the amps from another site though and I can't remember the name. They were very cool though and if I find the name again, I'll pass it on.

Total cost, after all the extra parts, was around $1800-$1900. That wasn't too bad for what he got. He should have paid over 3 grand for it all.

I didn't play with the Kenwood too much. It was confusing at first because buttons are not as clearly marked as I would like them to be. That's not Kenwood's fashion either. Odd. But it seemed to be a nice unit. Good, clean sound, nice easy transport to use on the CD player and it has a solid feel to it too. There are options out the wazoo too. I didn't get too far into it though.

I didn't get a chance to test it out too much because it was 2 am and I had to be here at work early to take the lovely abuse from my less-knowledgable co-workers that break systems and then get pissy when I can't help them fix it. Sitting in the driveway with the engine idling and tooling around some back roads for a bit to see how it all worked, it seems to be more that sufficient to handle the demands that he will put on it. Honestly though, the power levels and other stuff is a bit of overkill for what he was looking for but he has a tendency to have a heavy thumb when it comes to stereo volume. Driving with the open top, his heavy thumb will require a bit more overhead that what a less system would be able to provide. In an effort to avoid that, I went with serious amplification to give him all the power he thinks he needs and the extra power that he doesn't know he needs.

bknauss

eep! Lots to comment on during my lunch.

-4x6 issue has been discussed before... don't think I need to talk about it again.
-I've also seen that problem with the subs (just wiring up DVC in general). I was hooking up some DB DVC subs today, and those are the spade terminals... it was quite fun using the molex crimper for the female spade connectors and then soldering the terminal to the wire for extra precaution. I don't see how the average consumer could deal with that who wants to install the stuff themself.
-The screws, at least the general quality of them, has been discussed at Polk. We've gotten some complaints about them stripping from installers. I used some wood screws today that are used on the home subs, and they seemed to work fine on the DB subs. With that big gasket around the edge of the woofer, you can't see the head of the screw.
-I know it wasn't totally obvious, but when I was playing with the carbon coaxials, it seemed like one of the spade connectors was larger than the other, and by deduction, you could find what connectors went to the woofer and which to the tweet. Again, its been a while and I *think* that was the case.

Thanks for the feedback. I know personally I like to hear comments on the product, whether it is good or bad, and definitely when its tactful. The complaints you've mentioned aren't BS... I've heard a lot more ticky tacky complaints before that were because the person didn't know how to install stuff correctly (and the complaints were coming from people who are doing it for a living!)

And I think we've all done some goofy things with installs before (*insert laughter hear from Thom and Josh* ... they know the current state of my car). I was running power wire this past winter, and kept hearing a snap while I was pulling the wire through the firewall... well, turned out that I forgot to disconnect the positive from the battery and I was creating a nice spark

exalted512

onlinecarstereo is the best nonauthorized dealer that i know of...great prices, never had a problem with them...i got my diamonds from them
ive had no problems whatsoever with any of my momo gear aside from the cover on the mm6 crossover being a major PITA to get off
that and the whole blowing mm12s thing
i had the same problem the tweeters being to hard to move on my diamonds as well...
i ended up getting a flat head screw driver and putting it on the plastic outside ring of the tweeter and tapping it with my hand
you can see here:
the outside ring is what holds the tweet in...the inside ring is the tweet

and bknauss...
youre the man!
working on your lunch break!!
good job, you deserve a raise:)
-Cody

Jstas

Originally posted by bknauss

-I know it wasn't totally obvious, but when I was playing with the carbon coaxials, it seemed like one of the spade connectors was larger than the other, and by deduction, you could find what connectors went to the woofer and which to the tweet. Again, its been a while and I *think* that was the case.

Actually, the individual pair of leads had two sizes of spade connectors. They looked fairly similar for the tweeter and the woofer. I got around it and it really wasn't that big of a deal. I just thought that it would be better to have it marked somewhere on the outside of the crossover box so that it's easy to see. It honestly wasn't a problem. When I see negative things, I get around them anyway. That is part of the fun of doing the install. You run into a problem and you figure out how to get around it. It's the basics of engineering.

I just know I hit a negative or a problem that might have been avoided if I remember myself saying "Why the F*** did they do that?" at some point in the installation process. Nine times out of ten its something stupid or insignificant in the grand scheme of things regarding installs. I can get around it and it's a minor annoyance so it's a convienience thing for me but I can see how it's an issue for a novice installer. My friend actually started tracing wires back through the rollbar until I stopped him and just used the other crossover as a reference and taped the ends of the wires with markers so I knew where they went.

I always try to offer good feedback. I was overly pleased with the results and the gear and these measly pitance of a pile of negatives were nothing to me and did not detract from overall opinion of the gear one bit. Like I said, they were measly annoyances that I mentioned. Be glad too 'cause if I really had a bad experience with it, I wouldn't have been nearly as tactful!

I will say as a testament to the quality of the gear I convinced him to buy, after the wiring boo-boos and gremlins that he caused in his effort to learn something, it did work. I went over all the wiring one more time, checked every connection and screwed the hot side of the fuse down for the last time. Told him "Get in, turn on, let's see what happens!" The stereo started right up, all the power lights came on, the amps did thier self check and DING there was clean, quality sound and lots of it! It's a unique feeling when you get everything wired up completely and the very first time you power the whole system up, it works perfectly!

exalted512

yeah...if i get something wired up and it doesnt work i get really mad...and its usually something stupid
when i was rewiring everything in my truck i turned it on none of the amps came on
so i climbed in the back and trouble shooted everything for a little less than an hour before i realized i had taken out the fuse at the battery and hadnt put it back in...
but when everything started up when i put the fuse in and all 4 amps lit up...it was amazing:D
-Cody

Jstas

Originally posted by exalted512

i had the same problem the tweeters being to hard to move on my diamonds as well...
i ended up getting a flat head screw driver and putting it on the plastic outside ring of the tweeter and tapping it with my hand

Well, there is no ring to push because the grille for the tweeter covers the entire tweeter. The pod sits in a cradle at the end of the pole in the center of the woofer. Pushing on it with a screw driver would have done some serious damage. So I just did my best to move it with my thumbs and distributed the pressure as evenly as possible along the stronger edge of the grille so I wouldn'rt dent it. I was just really worried about denting his nice new speakers. Made for a very tense and frustrating time trying to get them aimed properly.

MacLeod

Not that this matters but as far as the terminals being unmarked, the ones on my MMC690s are. The tweeter leads from the x-over will only fit the tweet terminal on the speaker and likewise with the mid.

I wonder why they didnt do that with the 5.25. Maybe cause its smaller or something and it had to do with space issues.