GaryCat

Day 1: JVC KD-AVX2 Head unit and Pioneer TS-WX11A arrive. Still waiting for centre speaker.



First attempt at getting the JVC in end in failure. The faceplate is simply too high to fit in the 1-DIN hole where my old Sony came out. The other 1-DIN hole beneath it has the Subaru black pocket in there. I will have to modify the mounting holes in the bracket so that the body of the unit can be mounted about 3 mm lower than it is now. This means hacking the black pocket below the head so I can squeeze it in.

So, the Sony has gone back in until the weekend.

The JVC unit looks to be very good quality indeed for the price, £350 from http://www.audio66.com/ . I've never seen so many wires coming out of the back of a system. Apart from the usual ISO connector we have Centre out, Subwoofer out, Video in, Video Out, 6x line out, reverse gear signal (for a reversing cam), remote control, handbrake sensor.

GaryCat

Day 2: A visit to Maplin for two phono leads, a short one for the centre speaker, and a longer one for the sub. I hope 1.5 metres will reach from the head to under my seat. Also a 1 - 2 way phono splitter as the sub takes a left and right input and the head just has a mono one.

Email arrives from www.clarionworld.co.uk telling me that the centre speaker is in the post.

chiark

Marvellous

What centre speaker have you gone for? Is it the SRK5? if so, looks very neat!

GaryCat

Day 3: The centre speaker is the the SRK602 ( http://www.clarion-eu.com/uk/Speaker...b3e4bd6.0.html ) which will sit on top of the clock. The SRK5 may have been a better option considering that I'll have to move the head unit down a few mm but I can't find anyone selling it in the UK and the sound from a 1" driver can't be that good can it? Having said that, the speaker on the SRK602 looks pretty small too.

Other speakers I considered were:
Alpine SBS0715
Alpine SBS-05DC
Kenwood KSC-510CTR
Pioneer TS-CX7

Tomorrow: eviction day. Vote now to evict my old Sony.

GaryCat

Day 4:The Sony is out and the JVC is in (temporarily). As expected, the brackets needed some work to elongate the mounting holes by about 5mm so the unit could be mounted lower in the hole.

This pic shows the right hand bracket being worked on.



The black pocket below it also needed the top and bottom edges removed so now it fits entirely behind the silver facia.

GaryCat

Day 5: Centre Speaker and Subwoofer installed. Only job now is to wire up the switch that allows video to on while the handbrake is on.

I had a bit of a worry that the centre speaker wasn't working but after a lot of digging in the manual I found that it was disabled by default, and the menu option to enable it is only shown when there is a DVD in the slot. Nice one JVC.

The underseat wiring is a bit messy, any suggestions on how to tidy it up would be appreciated.

GaryCat

Day 6: and the install is complete. The JVC head looks and sounds great, pity about my installation skills and the hacking of the pocket below it. Now I know where it actually needs trimming I might get another from Subaru and make a better job.

Here's Dave Gilmour from the new Pulse 5.1 DVD.



The centre channel speaker looks (and sounds) small but as it normally just carries vocals that's not so much of a problem. I think I'll keep a look out for a more substantial one when the centre speaker market has more choice.



Under the seat sits the subwoofer and the amp for the centre speaker, it was easier to put it there then find a space behind the dash. The sub comes with a remote control on a 5 metre extension lead, who the hell needs to adjust their sub 5m away from it? As you can see the underseat cabling is a bit untidy so I may find some matching carpet and cut it around the sub and amp to cover the cables.



Overall I'm very impressed with the sound. Using Porcupine Tree's Stupid Dream DVD-Audio disc as a test, vocals had excellent clarity, the rear surrounds added ambience to the soundstage and the bass gave my **** a good massage.

Criss

SOme headunits you can't adjust the sub volume like you can on the JVC! So you need an in-line **** to fine tune the bass

Good job on it by the way!

But sub under the seat

Always in the boot where nobodys big drunken feet can kick at it!
But still looks good!

GaryCat

It was the length of the lead I was questioning, not what the ***** do.

The sub is designed to go under the seat. I can never understand the logic of sticking a sub in the boot behind the rear seats... isn't it muffled?

Criss

It depends what sort of speakers you have in the car and what speakers you have in the boot, anything bellow 124khz will travel through almost anything without any loss of sound!
I just have bass pooring out of every speaker, although not so much I found I can make my exhaust pop between 2-3k

Wurzel

iTrader: (1)

That's the same sub I have and is going under the seat aswell.

Re centre speaker I wrote to Kenwood and asked them about the posibility of them making a single din sized centre speaker and they sent the idea off to the R&D team in Europe and Japan.

As I have a Kenwood TV in the dash pod of my classic I no longer need the stereo in the dash so din size speaker would look cool in there, plus there really is no where to fit a centre speaker in a classic.

GaryCat

I finally got round to covering the under seat install with a rubber mat. Seems to do the job

GaryCat

This one looks to be the best DIN-sized speaker.

http://www.caraudiodesign.co.uk/prod...annel-speakers

I looked at getting one of these but it also needs an external amp. Maplin do a general purpose 40w mono amp for £16 ( http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?...37737&doy=27m8 ) which may do the job.

Dr freedom

Great job getting the headunit in. Ill be doing this myself. May even look for another bracket so I can keep one in for when I sell the car.

Cheers

Wurzel

iTrader: (1)

or this one but this seems a bit pricey.

http://www.ryda.com.au/Clarion-SRK5-...red-p/srk5.htm

this one comes with an amp so why does the DIN size one come without an amp?

http://www.caraudiodesign.co.uk/prod...other-speakers