I am no audiophile but I recall seeing speakers that were no thicker than the grill that mounted the speakers that where made of a white plastic instead of paper as it normally is. They claimed (on the packaging) that they would surface mount anywhere (I believe I saw these in K-mart's auto section while buying motor oil). Have no idea how well they work as In my Impalas I listen to the motor, in my Mercedes I listen to classical music.

Big Dave

 

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I am an audiophile and the K-Mart speakers will sound like mega crap and probably deteriorate to non-functional in 2 years time max.

Anything not in a direct line of sight to your ears will kill a lot of the highs that you would otherwise hear. You still have a few options depending on how discreet you want your speakers to be. Probably not for our cars but a lot of companies make kick panels with room for aftermarket speakers. If I were doing kick panels, which I may, I would glass in a compartment big enough for 6.5" 3-ways and recess mount a good pair of tweeters pointing the same direction as the 3-ways in the windshield pillars. One (or two) low profile subwoofers will probably fit under any of your seats and will take care of a modest amount of base. A sub in the trunk would take care of bass for you and the neighbors. My car (69 convertible) came with 6x9's in the rear side panels. Really too much for the location in my opinion and I would have instead opted for the 6.5" speakers back there.

When I get to the sound in my car, it will likely be 6.5's in the front doors or kick panels, a pair of cross-firing tweeters in the windshield pillars, 6.5's in the rear side panels and a trunk mounted sub, all driven by a 5 channel amp to keep everything simple. Will be using a retro sound head unit with an Ipod/usb to keep from hacking up the dash.

You should be able to google several examples aftermarket kick panels with designed-in speaker housings.

http://www.lowridermagazine.com/tech/0702_lrmp_lowrider_kick_panels/viewall.html

 

I agree Bob, the mids would be muffled and the highs seriously dampened by that under-seat speaker. (even noting it has a front facing tweeter, it looks like)

I'm with JustJohn a little bit, in that I am thinking, hoping that a pair of 6.5's in the door or kick-panel are a good start. I did take a risk though in purchasing a component system, and I will mount the tweeters in the factory center, under-dash location. (probably need a quickie custom bracket) My expectation from previous experience is that the front glass lends itself well to reflecting the tweeter sounds.

Like you, I'm not sure what to do in the back seat yet. I'll grab these same 6.5" and see if I think they can fit there and report back. (although those rear side panels are a total compromise for us, that's about all we got)
I wish that fancy speaker hole in the middle of our back seat was large enough for 2 6.5" speakers!

 

Perhaps your best bet would be to get an extra pair of stock kick panels and modify them to hold speakers. It would take some work with fiberglass and fiber board, but you just need some rings to build out the speaker mount and a hole cut in the kick panel for the magnet to extend in as far as practical.

 

BA, component speakers are a really nice upgrade in spite of being more trouble to install. You should keep in mind that you might be disapointed by the sound if you don't mount all the speakers on the same plane/axis. That is the reason I would mount tweeters firing across the car towards each other in the windshield pillars - because it keeps all the speakers on axis and helps avoid gaps in the sound. With your proposed locations, you would likely get nice bass and highs but find the mid range lacking because your ears won't be able to naturally place where the voices are coming from. If you look at the evolution of factory tweeter placement, you'll find they have discovered this over the last 10 years or so and the tweeter locations have generally moved from "somewhere up higher" to facing the same direction as the door or kick panel speakers.

 

Great points John!

Hopefully this isn't thread-jacking, but I think this is still on-topic.

What if, as an option.....I had the 6.5's mounted in my kick-panel and mounted them so that they were pointed up and more to the center of the car? Just curious and thinking out loud here for all possibilities. (also, I am in a convertible usually with the top down, so, there is that special environment to deal with.

In some of my previous installations for other cars/SUV's, I found the separate tweets harsh an upper door panel wasn't to my liking. Maybe it was the brand.
I do think I've had a Polk set once and put the tweet on the dash, near the A-pillar, angled to center a little, and as I recall, I liked that setup.

 

Great points John!

Hopefully this isn't thread-jacking, but I think this is still on-topic.

What if, as an option.....I had the 6.5's mounted in my kick-panel and mounted them so that they were pointed up and more to the center of the car? Just curious and thinking out loud here for all possibilities. (also, I am in a convertible usually with the top down, so, there is that special environment to deal with.

In some of my previous installations for other cars/SUV's, I found the separate tweets harsh an upper door panel wasn't to my liking. Maybe it was the brand.
I do think I've had a Polk set once and put the tweet on the dash, near the A-pillar, angled to center a little, and as I recall, I liked that setup.

Angled towards ears is almost always better if you can pull it off. Using tweeters in addition to a pair of 3 ways is essentially the same as a component separate, you are simply recovering the highs that got buried on the floor in all that acoustic damping insulation that keeps out road noise.
Based on what you have to say about tweeters above, I suspect your hearing is good enough to pick out the difference between metallic and soft dome tweeters. I have always preferred silk domes because they are smoother and more musical than a metal film tweeter. If you play back a single bell ring or a high frequency triangle's single note, you'll likely notice the silk dome tweeter will sound very smooth as the sound decays while the other will sound "grainy" and maybe overly bright.
In the end it's always a compromise in the car and I tend to overengineer it simply because I can and will maybe hear it once a year in still air.
Don't know if you noticed it but the link in my first post was a how-to on building kick panel enclosures.

 

I bought an additional set of kick panels to cut up for speakers so I don't have to alter the original ones. No kick panels are available for the '66 with the speakers built in. There is no depth behind the kick panel to mount speakers. I think the close proximity of the metal behind the kick panel may limit the magnet from moving it's full length. Maybe because it is an A/C car. I don't have a rear shelf either because it is a convertible.

I like the idea of tweeters mounted in the A-pillers but they would have to be surface mounted as, again, there is no room behind the piller (I checked).

So here's an idea. Suppose I mount tweeters in the a-pillers, use the dash speaker as left channel and the rear speaker as right channel and put a sub woofer under the rear seat?

I'll probably get the Secretaudio SRMS wireless remote control radio and mount it in the glove box. Since CD's are obsolete the i-Phone and aux input will be perfect. I'll mount the small wireless remote on the center console plate.

 

CD's are obsolete? All of the music I listen to are on CD's (483 discs so far) because the 15mb I-pod I bought back when they first came out died about two years after I bought it (hard drive first then the batteries quit after I replaced the hard drive; with the replacement hard drive loosing sectors faster than I could reformat the drive I tossed it).

But all of my CD's still play just fine, no scratches, no problems.

I have about 500 vinyl LP discs but I can not say the same thing about them (My LP turn table died decades ago and playing them with a worn stylus pretty well trashed my favorite discs that is why I replaced them with CD's).

Luckily I by-passed the eight track tape craze and went directly to cassette tapes only because nothing recorded on an eight track interested me at the time. Cassettes I learned do not do well in a car as the tapes all either have the plastic case warp so bad you can not insert them or the tape sticks to itself and breaks. I imagine an eight track probably has the same issues.

Big Dave

 

If you are going to do something like that, putting left in front, right in rear, then sound quality is secondary in your priorities.

For my kick panel speakers, I used a pair of Alpine SPR-60 6.5" 2-way speakers that had shallow magnets and tilting tweeters. Aiming the tweeters up helps them out. It does not get around the fact that the sound is coming from below, and the bass is limited, but other than that, it works good. Bass is handled by an under-seat sub and 6x9's in the rear deck.

Since I have a 64, they make kick panels for speakers, but if you want it bad enough, you can custom make your own for your car.

6x9's in the rear deck with grill cloth painted to match the interior.

Amps and EQ in the trunk

 

dcairns: nice job on the speakers but with A/C, no room behind the kick panels and the kick panels are curved just behind the vents it looks like that area won't be used.

sorry Dave, but CDs are so 20th century, a tiny flash drive or your iPhone will hold more music than you will ever carry in your car on CDs. I have 26 hours of music on my iPhone and it isn't even close to being full. Because my iPhone goes with me everywhere so does my music, not to mention all the apps. The "cloud" backs up all the data so you never loose it. BTW...what do you think of this new fangled LS small block GM has?

Just kidding of course. Us "old skoolers" have to stick together.

Regards,
Bob

 

Actually, there is no CD player there, just the amp at the bottom and front and rear EQs above. I made it so I could remove the whole thing for judged events.

 

This guy makes a glove box replacement that has DIN mount in it. Pretty cool if you don't need much glove box. Since it is small production, he can customize it some.

http://www.layitlow.com/forums/32-v...parts-classifieds/341071-hand-made-63-64-impala-glove-box-cd-player-bezels.html

 

All the music I play is on a 16GB Flash Drive...

 

Original

Why don't you with with the original stereo mounting that came optionally with the 66. Front 4x6 kick panel speakers with grills and rear mounted speakers in the boxes that were offered on convertibles that mounted behind the rear seat?

Paul

 

Why don't you with with the original stereo mounting that came optionally with the 66. Front 4x6 kick panel speakers with grills and rear mounted speakers in the boxes that were offered on convertibles that mounted behind the rear seat?

Paul

I would love to see what an original set up looks like. Maybe I can find one at a car show. I don't see how there is any room behind the rear seat as the convertible top fills that area completely when the top is down. As I mentioned there is no depth behind the kick panels and the large vents in the kick panels use up most of the panel. The panel is also curved so there is very little straight surface. The e-brake pedal doesn't help either. Maybe it's an A/C thing and the non A/C cars had more room in the panels.