[ocuriel]

For that past recent months, I’ve been acquiring gear and planning what I’m hoping is a very nice clean sounding, factory looking, and simplistic install, hence the Keep It Simple Stupid. I plan to start putting everything in when the weather starts to warm up. In the meantime, I have started to work on the fabrication. Instead of having my car taken apart, I ordered used sail panels and a low priced door panel. I will be fabricating tweeters into the sail panels and the door panel will be used for fit tests. I also ordered water proofed brackets from DIYMA member Delander for the front midbass and rear fill speakers. He also made me a nice floating shelf for the amp.

The car is a 2018 Infiniti Q50s with non-Bose. The front doors have tweeters in the sail panels, 3” drivers in the middle door and in my case (non-Bose) a 6.5”, however the woofer opening easily fits a shallow 8” or 10”.

This car has connectors at the door boots, so adding extra wiring for running active requires drilling though the connectors. I decided to go the passive route first. If I’m not happy with it I will take the plunge and start drilling.

I auditioned a lot of gear and I’m shocked at what I settled on. I wanted to audition the Morel Piccolo but instead of dropping $700+, I figured I order the Tempo tweeters to get a feel of Morel first. It’s been a while since I heard a Morel tweeter. I owned the MT22 in 2005. When I started to play the Tempo in my home testing rig, I noticed I was doing less tuning and more head bopping. This tweeter checks all the boxes for me. Super smooth, super detailed, high resolution and instruments sound real. Guitar sounds phenomenal. I don’t have anything negative to say about this tweeter. Even when the music gets a little crazy, it doesn’t get washed out.

I don’t want to turn this into a review, but just something about the Tempo that draws me in. MT220 sounds similar to the Tempo. It is slightly bigger and the dome has a coating that the Tempo does not. It brings a tad bit more resolution to the table while still being almost as smooth as the Tempo. This one was slightly too sensitive for the other speakers I chose, but what a great tweeter as well. This thing gave me goose bumps. A lot of people are sleeping on Morel. I felt that I didn’t need to go up to the Piccolo anymore. Just to give everyone a reference of what I’m comparing these tweeters to, here is a list. All are great in their own way so not knocking any of them.

I tested:

Focal KX3 3 way
Focal aluma/mag tweeters from their home $7k-$15k towers
Dynaudio MD102 & MT171
Vifa XT25
Dayton small ribbon
Audio Frog GB10
Morel MT220
Canton Pullman
Scan Speak Ring Radiator
Audio Frog GS25
Dynaudio Esotan 3 way
I’ve also owned a few old goodies like the Seas Lotus, LPG26na, and MT22.

This is the gear I’ve settled on:

Tweeters: Morel Tempo
Mids: Morel 2.5” CCWR254
Midbass: 8” Volvo Dynaudio woofers
Crossover: Dynaudio 3 way crossover
Rear fill: Morel Tempo 5 1/4”
Amp: JL Audio VXI1000/5 with built in DSP
SUB: JL W6 12”
Sound deadening: Dynamat Extreme (ordered before I found out about “the deadening”)

So on to the pics. I’ll reserve the next posts to update with pics.

 

[ocuriel]

Tweeter fabrication pics:

Figuring out the location so the tweeter is out of the way of the blind spot light and a pillars. It was tight.

Pitched up and slightly back. Target was the b pillars

Drilled and sanded with 200 so it takes bondo. Went with Rage.

2nd coat of rage. I was still waiting on my bondo applicator so I used cardboard 😬. I should of taped up the inside of the cup. It got a little messy.

Few coats of rage and 3m red putty.

Done sanding and getting ready to apply SEM texture. Made sure I wiped it down with alcohol a few times and made sure it was dust free. Really important step.

2 light coats of texture. About a foot away.

Painted with SEM black interior paint and buttoned up.

 

[ocuriel]

Midrange brackets:


Factory 3” speaker

Factory speaker chopped up so it can be used as the factory bracket and some ABS rings made. Glue is Scotch-weld. It works awesome. I tested it on 2 abs pieces. I could not separate them vs partsexpress glue which I was able to separate pretty easy.

Test fitting

 

[ocuriel]

Stock speaker

Front brackets

front bracket with 8” Dynaudio (Volvo)

Brackets for rear fill (Morel Tempo 51/4”)

Shelf for floating amp. Will be installed underneath the rear shelf

Down rods for shelf

 

[ocuriel]

Here is the sub box that I bought from a DIYMA member here. I plan on making a few changes though. This will be located in the left corner. I plan on chopping the overhang on the left and making the bottom one height.

12w6” just waiting

 

[ocuriel]

Reserved for pics

 

[ocuriel]

Reserved for pics

 

[ocuriel]

Reserved for pics

 

[ocuriel]

Reserved for pics

 

[AudioBob]

Nice job on the tweeters. I like the Morel Tweeters a lot. I have a set of Morel Virtus 602 that I am going to install in a Mercedes that I just purchased.

 

[ocuriel]

Nice job on the tweeters. I like the Morel Tweeters a lot. I have a set of Morel Virtus 602 that I am going to install in a Mercedes that I just purchased.

Thanks. Yeah I agree.

some people call Morel a Dynaudio knockoff, but they have their own unique sound signature.

 

[DeLander]

Nice buddy. Keep going 👍

 

[dBassHz]

Great job so far! Looking forward to the rest of the build!