Finally, connect the tweeter and midrange speaker cables to the crossover box. A
common mistake is to accidentally reverse the positive and negative connections
somewhere in the car. This can result in poor bass response and out of focus vocals. This
condition is known as connecting “out of phase” and is a common mistake! So ensure you
always have the striped or red wire going to the positive terminal throughout the
installation.
NowNow you can connect the input cables from the audio source. Most likely these will be the
original wires that were previously going to the standard door speaker. You might have to
extend them - if you are indeed connecting directly to the factory cables from the head
unit, then you can sometimes have a tricky job because the colours and markings of OEM
cables are inconsistent from side to side. The easiest way to get this right is use a simple
multi meter. Firstly, set the multi meter to volts. Then, connect the ground wire of the multi
meter to a ground point of the car and play some music through the head unit, testing
eacheach wire as you go. The multi meter will show either a positive figure or a negative figure
as the music plays. The wire that goes into positive voltage is the positive cable. Connect
this to the positive side of the speaker and connect the other wire to the negative side of
the speaker.
If you are connecting via an amplifier your task becomes a lot easier. All you have to do is
remember which wire is positive coming from the amplifier by identifying the stripe on the
wire and keeping that convention consistent throughout your installation. So it’s either
“stripe to positive” or “stripe to negative” right the way through.
NowNow your installation is basically complete you can temporarily reassemble the car and
have a preliminary listen. When it comes to setting up your system for sound, please
remember that the single most common cause of speaker failure is distortion. And the
single most common cause of distortion is an amplifier set at too high a level.
TheThe most annoying aspect of car audio is that the car radio manufacturers insist on
producing head units that actually distort at about three quarters the way up their volume
scale. If you add a little bass to the settings this critical point can be as low as half the way
up the volume level! The result of this is that the hapless owner of the system blames the
speaker for the distortion. The comment is usually “the speakers are not powerful enough
to take the sound.” In reality, you need to ensure that you play the system within the
scope of the capability of the amp you are using. If this is a simple head unit then consider
addingadding a subwoofer if you need more bass – or add an amplifier to the speaker outputs if
you need to drive your new speakers harder. Whatever you do, don’t sit there distorting
your sound and then expect us to dish out replacement speakers under warranty.
With your BassFace speakers you are going to experience a much finer tonal balance and
a superb stereo experience. What you are not going to do is to make your amplifier or
head unit more powerful than it already its, or to re-write the rules of physics and create
sub bass out of a speaker that is not designed to do that.
Once the levels are nicely set up and you have your system performing at its best you will
want to try switching the tweeter level selector control inside the crossover boxes. The
settings are full, -3db and +3db. If the tweeters are mounted in the kick/foot wells or with
the mids in the doors then you will most likely leave the switch in full +3db mode. With the
tweeters up on the dashboard reflecting off the windscreen you may find that the sound
is slightly “bright” – in which case the 0 or even -3 setting may be preferable. Once these
