Hi,
As above.. I've now completed 2 little mods which I'm very happy with. First was the angels. As we all know, the standard colour is just too yellow and looks dull. So after some reading on here and a few PM's to people (thank you for your help!) I decided to go with the ones from SSDD. You can't go wrong for £60 and it totally transforms the car. Unfortunately the outer ring isn't as bright as the inner but I knew that was the case before they went in so all was good. At night however, you can see both clearly and they look brilliant.
Then it was on to the sound install. Firstly, I have to say a HUGE thank you to Sameer (Makkan00) who has answered a 1000 questions for me and has given a hell of a lot of advice - So THANK YOU!
I have the standard system which I have to say is a pile of shi*. You'd think that the sound would be half decent having underseat subs in addition to the door speakers, however this is not the case. I'm not hugely into massive installs and cost was also a factor so I started looking into the options available.
I wanted to keep things looking as OEM as possible - keeping the standard head unit was a must. I've had after market HU's before (Alpine) and I know they are great but as said, I wanted to keep things looking stock and I like the look of the standard head unit.
The Alpine retro fit kit was the first potential avenue. However, its costly for what it is and the result wouldn't be exactly what I wanted. Yes, its louder and you have a lot more clarity and the addition of the tweeters is great but it just didn't do it for me. I wanted more of a thump.
Sameer then gave some other thoughts. To get some other door speakers which would be cheaper than the alpine kit and to then replace the under seats with some SWS8's and to then amp the lot.
I liked the idea of this seeing that when I had the roof down the sound would not be compromised, however having listened to the SWS8's - I liked them but again, being a shallow woofer I still wanted more of a thump.
In the end I opted for a 10 inch JL Audio W3 and a JL amp. Having a JL enclosure was important to me as they are perfect for the sub, however this was not possible down to the roof hatch catching on it.
Some may say that by having the lot in the boot, the bass is trapped and that when the top is down you lose sound. You're right.. I do lose a fair bit of the bass when the top is down, but seriously you can still feel the thump by a considerable amount. My brother had a Saab convertible and you could barely tell he had a sub when the top was down but its VERY different with this car. As for when the roof is closed, wow.. I'm VERY happy given that it's a hardtop - its brilliant.
Because I wanted to keep the standard head unit, an LOC was required. So again, Sameer came to the rescue and sold me the VEN4. So away I went..
I told the installers that I wanted to keep the amp hidden, so they fitted it under the boot lining card thingy.
When they fitted the sub, they said that there wasn't enough clearance for the sub to function, so they ended up taking the back seat card off and as result, you can now see the sub when you put the centre armrest down. A little bonus.
Cost wise: Under £500
Anyways, enough talking.. here you go. There's a few more pics in there as was a nice sunny day! I hope you like it!
