These speakers have sizable crossovers with them that required deciding where to put them. The stock speakers have small capacitor on the tweeter as a way to roll off the low frequencies and the woofer is just run full range. I chose to tuck the crossovers behind the windscreen in the fairing.
The next decision was to how to mount the tweeters. I've been corresponding with another guy who is doing a similar upgrade. That's how I know that the 6.5" speakers can be made to fit. cooldude He has mounted the tweeters where the stock tweeters are located. He uncased the tweeters as they come, and they fit. This had not even occurred to me when I mounted mine as the tweeters are too large to fit as they come. The tweeters come with two options for mounting. Flush mounting and surface mounting. To flush mount them using the items as they come from Polk Audio, would have required some irreversible modifications to the dash/grill area. I wasn't too keen on that, so I chose to surface mount the tweeters. I had to drill two small holes in each speaker grill screen. This was to accommodate the speaker wire and the mounting screw/bolt. They come out fine IMHO, but I may choose to mount them the way this other guy did. I'm planning on ordering some custom painted screens with the CVMA logo painted on them, and may choose to change the mounting at that time.
The advantage to the surface mounting is that the tweeters can be pivoted for aiming. Not a big deal, but it is a consideration that once they are mounted in the stock location, they
This brings us to the amplifier and it's hook up. This was the most challenging part of the install. I did not think or plan on the difficulties experienced, but my learning process may help others.
I chose a fairly new / unknown amplifier company named NVX. Their products seem to be mainly available through Sonic Electronix online. This is the amp I chose. I got it for Christmas. Remember theme
It has great reviews and has been bench tested to outperform the manufacturer's specifications. It is also very small/compact. The amplifier was not what made the install difficult. The difficulty came in getting an audio signal for the amplifier to amplify. On the onset , it seemed it should be a pretty straight forward deal. The amplifier has both RCA inputs and speaker level inputs for when RCAs are not present. Sooooo, I initially hooked up the amplifier using the speaker wires from the factory system. I ran them to the speaker level inputs and then ran speaker wire from the amp to the crossovers of each speaker channel. Voila right? NO. It sounded like crap. However, I could hook my phone directly into the amp and it's RCA inputs and it sounded great. So the sound through the factory system was awful. I would put it all back to stock before living with that. It sounded like the input of the new amp was being over driven. So I bought some Low to High impedance adapter ( Speaker level to RCA adapter). The one I chose is supposed to be rated to 50 watts. Same situation. Now I'm beginning to wonder or suspect that the OEM electronics just suck that much. I had too options or thoughts. One, I could purchase another adapter rated to an even higher wattage input. Or two , I could tap into the OEM wiring harness and hijack the pre out signals before they go to the factory amp. Let me digress for a moment.
There was a third option. That involved using the headset signal as a pre-amp signal to the amplifier. There is an adapter that will adapt the 5 pin din plug to an 1/8" stereo plug. The one could use another adapter to then adapt the 1/8" stereo plug to a couple of RCAs. I tried this out. Not with buying any adapters, but I tapped into the harness for the headset and soldered op a couple of RCAs. It worked great, and if someone didn't want to do the soldering, they could use the mentioned adapters. I didn't have the patience to wait for ordering the 5 pin din adapter. There are a couple of caveats to going this route that might be obvious. One, the headset button has to be engaged for the stereo to then work. Two, if someone wants to have their headset fuction normally without the speakers playing too, this won't work. Plus, I use the fading feature of the stereo with my final set up. There is no fading with the headset option. Here is the harness after I tapped into it.
What I did end up doing.
I chose to tap into the pre out signals. Now, at the time of doing this, I did not have the Honda Shop manual yet. I now have that. Got it from my dealer for $69. Pretty good deal considering the best I've seen the net was $10 more. The mechanic let me take some pictures of his manual and the wiring diagrams needed. He had to unwrap his manual as it was brand new. They are a very new dealer that opened up about 2 years ago I think . It's where I bought my F6B and they're just 2 miles or so down the road. cooldude I tried to get him to just give me his in exchange for the one I ordered, but he said he'd be in trouble if for some reason Honda were to find him without one on hand..
I removed the tail end body work and removed the OEM amplifier. The amplifier resides in an enclosure by itself behind the rear wheel. I didn't have to remove the amplifier to tap into the signals, but my intention was to put the new amplifier in it's place. The audio signals that feed the amplifier come from the "Audio Unit" located under the passenger seat in a black enclosure. This would be equivalent to what would be called the head unit in car audio terms. The controls on the fairing left side are just that. Controls. I pulled out the amplifier and made the decision to cut the wiring harness in half. The amplifier has three bundles coming from the amp to a plug that plugs into the factory wiring harness. I cut the three bundles mid way and now I had the factory plug with the wires needed. If I ,for some reason, wanted to return the bike to stock, I will have to splice and solder all those wires back together. In those wires are the speaker wires for four speakers ( the bike is wired for all four speakers even though it only has the front speakers) , the wires for the pre out signals for all 4 channels and positive power and ground. I made up a harness, thinking I'd try to use all the factory wiring. This proved unsatisfactory and I ended up only using the pre out signals. Both the factory power leads and the factory speaker wiring degrade the sound substantially. Here is a pic of the harness i first made up.
Ultimately, the idea of putting the amp back where the OEM resided , was not going to work. Had I not just lost my patience, I may have been able to figure out a way to make it work, but I was back and forth whether that was where I really wanted it. The enclosure there has a drain for a reason, and I just was not sure how the new amp would survive. Did I mention it's behind the rear wheel underneath the rear fender?
The issue was that the wiring harness I built was too long and required too much space and that the new amp had to sit vertically where the RCA jacks protruded above the plane of the enclosure leaving a hump that there was no room for. I could have got some right angle adapters for the RCAs and maybe resolved the issue by modifying my harness, but foooey.
Here is a pic of the amp in
Have to split this up again.
Originally Posted by Jimmytee
These speakers have sizable crossovers with them that required deciding where to put them. The stock speakers have small capacitor on the tweeter as a way to roll off the low frequencies and the woofer is just run full range. I chose to tuck the crossovers behind the windscreen in the fairing.
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