Help me pick drivers for a 3 way front stage

[///M5 2,833]

If you were asking frequency ranges, you should let your ears help there. It will depend on where the 3" doesn't like playing down to and when you are unhappy with its top end. First things first though and that is getting them in at an angle you like them playing. Personally, I'd wait to buy the tweeter until I had the aiming of the midrange down.

[ABXX49 20]

Is that just to see how much room I have, or rather the axis I'm able to achieve? Or both!

[///M5 2,833]

Both. If you had to, you could use a small format tweeter which buys you a lot of room. Playing with the mounts for the mids first should be your focus.

[ABXX49 20]

Both. If you had to, you could use a small format tweeter which buys you a lot of room. Playing with the mounts for the mids first should be your focus.

As my goal is to get majority of my frequency range to play from my mid, correct?

[SKEEMASK 3]

I went with the Mach5 MLI-65 for midbass, the Dayton RS-120 4" midrange and some Kenwood tweets. That Mach5 is a beast. Its rated @ 100rms but if its gonna be used as a dedicaded midbass from 80hz up then u can give it well over 100watts. I tried the Dayton out before and it was seriously loud in many different directions u angle. Its rated @ 30 watts but it has a low sensitivity rating so Ull want to run about 50-80rms to it. But that again can achieved depending on what its used for. when u read reviews u gotta look at what they were trying to do with it. I saw a review on that particular 4" 1 time before that wasnt so nice. But the thing about it was the guy was trying to use it as a mid bass and not a midrange. He was pumping midbass freqs into it and expecting it to perform. If its used in what it was intended for then u cant beat it for $24 bucks.

[///M5 2,833]

Both. If you had to, you could use a small format tweeter which buys you a lot of room. Playing with the mounts for the mids first should be your focus.

As my goal is to get majority of my frequency range to play from my mid, correct?

As much of it that will sound good. I wouldn't expect it to be happiest above 200hz and to get nasty at 10kHz, so somewhere in between. You can use a shallow slope on the bottom end HP, but to get it to play high you will need a pretty steep slope to tame the 10kHz breakup or a lower crossover point. The higher you HP is the more power it will take as well so be gentle when you are first listening to it in a broad range before reducing what frequencies you pass to it. Listen to it alone without any other drivers as well as it will make your decisions of where to cross it over much easier.

[ABXX49 20]

Going to bring this one back!

Still going active 3 way, but I wanted to ask another question. Have any of you run the midbass in the kick and done tweeter and midrange in the door? I'm just thinking I can go with a larger mid this way and definitely a large format tweeter. Will the staging be messed up here? Is the original way better? Just trying to explore all options.

[///M5 2,833]

Two problems with that.

1) It is a super serious pain in the ass to get the 8's in your kicks. You will need to vent them somehow into the fenders or outside the car otherwise they will be seriously cramped for space.

2) The mid/tweet is where the aiming/PLD differences really are key. Putting them in the doors defeat this.

So can it be done, sure. Is it logical, not at all. You will gain nothing and lose a lot. Even with more room I wouldn't use a mid larger than a 4"...

[ABXX49 20]

Thanks. All I needed to hear!

[Andy Jones 0]

If you put that car on a lift and look under it, you will notice two shoe box size enclosures. You can cut a hole in the first layer of the firewall and get access to that area and an 8" driver will flush in to the floor and be perfectly on axis with the listener. This is something several people did with that car back in the day for SQ competition. It works very nicely.

Then you would have room to put a 4" and tweeter in the kickpanel.

I've played with a bunch of 3" drivers----they work nicely in the dash and in the apillars (if you can get past other issues), but in the kicks they simply don't have the output to stay linear with the rest of the system. By the time you get the volume from the 3" to match up with the rest of the system you are driving that driver into heavy distortion. So you either have to choke back every other driver or deal with that sound.

Go with a 4" or a 5 1/4" if you can fit it in the kicks. The extra cone area will allow you more output. It will work out much nicer. Don't go bigger than a 5 1/4", you get into some beaming issues with bigger drivers.

If you are going to put a tweeter in the kickpanel you need something that has GREAT dispersion characteristics. If you don't have that, you are going to have a rainbow for a stage. That generally means a bigger dome driver. If you are using a small dome you may find one. A friend doing some testing may have found one yesterday--I'll know more later this week. After that if you go small you may want to try in the apillars or the sail panels to stop the rainbow.

If you do go with the doors---spend a LOT of time deadening the door, wrapping the locks in rubber hose or split loom, zip tieing wires, deadening the door panel and everything else to try and stop rattles. I personally HATE doors for midbass locations but sometimes people are not willing to cut up there car to get midbass in the kicks. I understand that, but God I hate door mounted midbass.

[///M5 2,833]

Good to hear there is extra room for 8's not in the doors. I'd agree that there are so many things that can rattle and annoy you in the door it is far from ideal, but as you alude to without major surgery it is tough to put them anywhere else