[redz06]

Like others out there I'm just a tweaker as well. I have put my own systems in several cars before, and this will probably not be my last. I have also built home hi-fi speakers, so I was not going in blind. The fact that I put the system in in three steps was for my convenience, as I am not quitting my day job to go into competition with VP.

The narrative in with my install was just to point out the things that don't go as planned the first time one does a project. One might say I set up VP to tout all of the improvements his kit offers, which are a result of his doing the same project many times. Of course his experience, some short bits of wire, and the 4" speaker rings do not come at a small price.

Looks like Imperator learned some lessons from this. So did I, but they were not the same lessons. My lessons were:

1) Sometimes you get what you paid for; sometimes you get less.
2) Custom should be better than what the OEM's beancounters installed; otherwise someone has missed the point.
3) Some people do like working for free. I do it all the time on my cars and my hi-fi system. If you are like me, don't quit your day job.
4) Based on my results, incrementalism does not work well for this system. That being said, I wish I had tried the Ovation II speakers in the doors ahead of the JL amplifier, as one of our forum threads was pretty complementary of that setup.

Some folks may think I had to overcome a lot to do this install. It really did not seem that way to me. Yeah, I ordered speakers from Israel, Amp from Arizona and speaker rings from Hawaii. It's all pretty painless on Amazon. I ordered the Jehnert speakers directly from the US importer and the wiring harnesses from Techic. I have warranties on everything, though it is not one-stop shopping.

By the way, the Jehnert speakers are not vehicle specific. If you go on the Jehnert Germany website, you will see that Jehnert is applying the same speakers to a number of other German cars. Now the clear plastic spacer rings, those are BMW specific.

My comment on the cost versus visual quality of the Jehnert speakers stands. I hope they last forever, but I purchased mine from the US distributor, so I will not have to depend on hope. I have someone else in that game with me.

My past experience at buying raw drivers has been that the stamped steel frames with small voice coils does not make for a long-life product. I was looking for a beefy cast frame with a 2" diameter voice coil at the price point involved. Silly me.

I am very happy with the results of my project. The soundstage is very focused and spans the entire windshield. The underseat woofers pick up the bass below 200 Hz (and I have not tried any other frequencies yet). I have been using the Ovations and JL amp for three weeks and the Jehnerts for about a week. I have had to increase the gain of the amplifier that drives the Jehnerts a coule of times. The gain of the channels that drive the Ovations is minimized.

This is not because of amp distortion but rather because the volume of the seatbelt gong was driving me crazy when I tried to raise the sensitivity of the front channels. NO I do not drive on the public streets w/o seatbelts. The loud gong noise when I am working on the car in my drivewaystill bugs me. I suppose I could get the gong removed by re-programming, but I am not looking forward to this issue everyting the dealer decides to reflash the ECU. If someone on this forum has another way to silence the gong, I would appreciate that info.