986President

I thought I would put my latest discovery on the forum for anyone looking to upgrade their sound system in the future.

Again, I have a CDR23 with dash speakers only and no amp. I found the overall sound quality to be muddy and it did not fill the cabin very well but sounded like it was a "squawk box" in the dash.

I did not want to put much money into a sound upgrade mainly because the car cabin is small and doesn't seem to lend itself easily to premium sound equipment. I also tend to agree with prevous posts that once the top is down your sound quality drops significantly so why bother. After reading many posts here it sounds like you have two options: 1. have a professional intallation and pay $$ or 2. get the rear speaker kit and pull apart your car for a modest sound upgrade --- oh and you need an amp to do this and of course need to pull apart your car even more to install that...

I then began to wonder how the hell can a little desktop sound system (like a Bose) sound so amazing with only two speakers? I know they are built specifically for that task but still... So I bought a pair of Boston Acoutic RX47 - 4 inch speakers and after much fooling around I got them mounted in the dash and they sound great. I will add that it is not the full sound that most of you are trying to get because I have no bass speaker but they are so much better in my opinion than the crappy factory speakers. The improved sound could be described as sharper and brighter. They have more of a snap to them than the thunking of the old ones. I think I have accomplished all I was looking to do.

So if you are just trying to get a better sound you might try replacing the dash speakers. If you are going to do it yourself I suggest removing one of them to see what the factory mount looks like (and what you are getting into) before buying any speakers. You have to get a speaker under two inches deep and then devise a way to mount it to the dash.

Seacrest Out