T6 Ferrari Tweeter Upgrade

catfood12

catfood12

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After my Blam bits never arrived, I've had to form another plan for ICE upgrade. I think the tweeters lack the most, and wanted to do them first.

This tweeter is in the premium sound systems in Ferrari 599s and FFs. They were originally developed by Infinity, part of Harman for BMW's Harman Kardon, and use the Infinity Ceramic Metal Matrix Diaphragm (C.M.M.D.) cone.

Tweeter1.jpg


They're made/badged now by JBL Professional. They're almost a plug and play upgrade for the standard and Bose tweeters in Cayenne 958, and make a real difference to the top end of percussion and vocals. I replaced my stock Cayenne tweeters with a pair of these a couple of years ago..pork tweeter1.jpg

I was at Eurospares a couple of weeks ago, chopping a used bit off some Italian exotica, and saw a freshly stuffed 599. Got the tweeters out of it, with a plan to get them grafted into the van.

Even on this top end premium of premium stuff, they still used crappy electrolytics for the crossover.

Tweeter2.jpg

They had to go first. Swapped out for a pair of foil caps. These are much bigger than electrolytics, but there's plenty of space in the T6 A pillar..

Tweeter3.jpg



Even then, I struggled to find a couple of caps that weren't outside their tolerance. Also making use of my newly acquired Ebay £15 component checker...
 
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Loosely in place in the trim...

mounted 1.jpg

Need to mount firmly. Will probably Araldite in place...

mounted 1.jpg

Just need to sort the fixing, will cut the plug and loom off the OEM speaker and see how they sound....:)

Not tonight though.....:sleep:

mounted2.jpg
 
andys said:
In layman's terms, what do you gain from changing the capacitors? Is it worth doing on any crossover?
Click to expand...

There are two things really, If you change the rating (measured in farads) then you can change the frequency that the capacitor will filter at, but you need to ensure that the load (tweeter or other speaker type) can handle the new frequency range. Secondly, by keeping the same rating but buying a higher quality capacitor, you can get a better response, i.e. how quickly the capacitor goes from not filtering a certain frequency to filtering and/or a higher power handling ability.

In the case of audio systems, the three factors need balancing and some companies will spend hours and £££ in R&D matching components to devices to achieve the best results.

and here endeth the Geek session. :D
 
What Al said. This relates to better sound quality overall. The caps' values was the same in this case, 4.7uF, you get a more accurate attenuation across the frequency range, close to theory, with the film caps. The cheapy electrolytics with an unknown and proprietary electrolyte have bumps across the frequency range and do non linear things with harmonics, which all manifest as distortion or missing frequencies. They also break down over time with ripple current, although that's less of an issue with audio caps. You can hear the difference between an electrolytic cross over and a film cap one. Worth doing in any crossover, especially domestic kit. Whether that is still the case in a T6 PV at motorway speeds is more subjective...:)
 
Going active would make those little blighters sparkle, I've only got a basic version of active in my other car with a single din slot Pioneer DEH 80PRS but absolutely hours of fun ponsing around tweaking drivers after the head units mic. has set up eq and time alignment and brilliant for compensating for aged ears 24dB per octave roll off above 12 kHz.:(... shame it doesn't have any of that new fangled stuff from this century.:oops:
 
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