Boosting mids on a budget

[white4d96]

I am currently running one pair of MB Quart EKA-113's off of 125 watts apiece. They aren't quite doing the job on midbass and midrange. I had just decided to deal with it until two things happened.

A-I started to smoke the coils on both woofers (c'mon, would you be surprised? They've had 125-140rms from two different amps for the past seven months!)

and

B- A client of mine talked me into doing a setup for him using a small amp (55x4 or 65-75x4@2) and a whole bunch of cheap mids.

This got me thinking. If I were to get a couple pairs of entry-level mids and maybe some by-nines or something for the back, then make small 'boxes' to house them on the doors (I can't glass for crap and can't afford to redo door pods eight times over) Maybe I could pull some decent mids and midbass out of the deal for cheap. I am also planning on moving the pods higher on the doors for slightly better imaging if I do go this route.

I was just wondering if anyone had done anything similar and had any pictures of it. It would help me out greatly to see if this will even be worth any effort and how they did the job.

Thanks in advance

[TheSundownFire]

Most speakers are designed for infinite baffle (ie your door) so putting them in a small ass box wont make them sound as good as possible. Youll probably lose midbass. Like I did with my kick panels

[newls1]

by me doing 2 layers of sound deadner "INSIDE" the doors on my tahoe made my mid-bass 1000000% more defined. Have you tried doing this yet?

[basshead4life]

i used 2 pairs of Nextar 6.5's in my doors run off the head unit and for $50 worth of speakers the mid bass wasn't bad and i plan on doing it again

You can check the glassed doors build log in my sig

[white4d96]

I was honestly surprised by my client's car after I finished with it. He had two pairs of Dual speakers (gag!), a 6.5" set and a 4" set. Put them in 1/2" birch baffles up above the armrests on the door panels and ran them off the front channel at 2 ohms. It's decently loud! Kinda ugly looking, but he's happy with it. All told, he spent about $100 on amp, doors, carpet and glue. I will get pics after we get carpet on them.

[ptcary]

I would of kept the MbQuarts, added a dedicated midbass driver to them and gone 3-way. MbQuart makes an "add-a -woofer" midbass with crossovers.

...and yes an added baffle makes a huge difference. I did a 3/4" MDF ring in my doors and my q-logic kickpanels, along with some sound deadener.

I have the same MbQuarts in my kick panels and door pods, they are not great at midbass, but not bad either. I use a Selenium midbass (not the 6w4p) in my doors with a JL audio midbass passive crossover.

I think if you went "3-way", you would easily solve all your problems.

Ring picture:

Here is the Selenium midbass for those who have never seen them.

[white4d96]

Interesting idea.

I still have the MB Quarts; I just need to replace the crossover capacitors on them because they exploded. (That seems to be what was going on when I thought I blew the woofers.)

[mlstrass]

2 decent mids per door will work well if midbass is what you're after. PB 6.5's Mach5 mil's are around $75pr. Also check PE for tangband and a few other budget brands. Bunch of el cheapo speakers might give you more midrange, but not midbass and they won't sound all that good.

I run 2 AA cf mids per door and HPF them at 63Hz and they have plenty of midbass. You're welcome to come and hear them sometime as I'm just across the IL state line.

You have a shop up in ktown???

[white4d96]

Not me personally, but there's a couple up here. Audio Connection is in the uptown area and they deal AB and DD. There's some decently loud builds from outta there. There's another shop on the north side that deals all the mainstream stuff but I'm not too fond of them.

I'm still debating what I truly want to do. I might even just try going to a set of comps and see if those get any louder. One thing's for sure: I'm waiting a while to do anything due to a lack of funds at the moment. Bunch of stuff going on with school=no work=no audioz.

[mlstrass]

Not me personally, but there's a couple up here. Audio Connection is in the uptown area and they deal AB and DD. There's some decently loud builds from outta there. There's another shop on the north side that deals all the mainstream stuff but I'm not too fond of them.

I'm still debating what I truly want to do. I might even just try going to a set of comps and see if those get any louder. One thing's for sure: I'm waiting a while to do anything due to a lack of funds at the moment. Bunch of stuff going on with school=no work=no audioz.

Team DOA did the comp at Audio Connection last year, we had around 12-14 cars. Saw a bunch of DD set ups that were decent, but nothing really loud. He's supposed to do more shows this year and I'm sure we'll be there.

1 comp set could be fine, just depends upon how loud your substage is...