Possibly tradin in my Focal Polykev's for Utopia 3 ways..

[Need4Spd]

Just wondering if you guys have had any experience with the Focal Utopia 165W3's.. (3 way speakers.. 6 1/2 woofer, tweets, 4" mid). I have Focal Polykevlar 165k2's right now.. and well, believe it or not, i'm no longer impressed :( Damn things kicked on me. My audio shop says I musta gotten a bad pair.. so they are switching them out for free on Monday. This is not the only thing that bothered me about them... they don't have enough depth and detail for my discriminating ears.. something is just missing. The highs are incredible.. and the lows are pretty good... but something in the middle is just missing. Not to mention, they sure have a tough time keeping up with dual IDMAX 12" subs.

Anyway, after talking to the guy, if I come back in a month or even two.. he won't mind taking back my Polykev's for the price I paid for them and swapping them out for the 3 way Utopias (paying the difference). They'd build me some custom speaker pods for the mids. It'd be damn pricey.. but I'm really considering it. Problem is if I do this I won't be able to afford Tein SS's for a while. I dunno what the hell to do. I heard the 3 ways a long time ago in a Viper and was on the edge of my seat. The 3 ways would be getting about 200 watts per side. Hm, I dunno... they offer financing and I figured that If I did that I'd pay about 83 bucks a month for a year a half. A lotta money.. but it sounds like God's gift to speakers as I remember. What should I do....?

[J3adSeed]

dude thats EXACTLY what i want. too bad kicks cost a fortune. and i'm afraid they'll take up too much space. but yeah three ways are amazing.

[Need4Spd]

Yeah they are a fortune... too bad Q-logic doesn't make anything for our cars :(

Space IS a problem.. and because of the space issue I am not going to be doing all out kick panels if I go through with this. The tweets will be mounted in the stock locations, the 6.5" woofer will be in the doors and the "kicks" (really more like an extra speaker slot) will have the 4" mids in them.

Should I do it? Ahhhhhhhhh.. dunno wat to do. I want it badly tho.. but so much $$$.

[J3adSeed]

well i'm the same place you are. i have been OBSESSING about this for over a month now. the one thing with the stock tweeter loc. and the 4" in a kick is, thats supposedly bad for imaging. you want the 4 and tweeter as close as possible because they work together to make the mids. i'm sure they'd tell you to do the 4 and the tweeter in the kick. i've been thinking about it and the system i want is then up close to 4000 so i think i'm just going to do two ways. unfortunately. but this will probably change again tomorrow and again the next day.

[Need4Spd]

i understand you should have the tweeter as close as possible to the mids.. and so do they.. but they said that it won't really make much of a difference unless I plan on competing. The door is not as tall as others.. and the distance between the speakers in stock locations is really not that bad. It'll make a barely audible difference. I know they are telling me what they really think.. because if they were just trying to make a sale they'd tell me I had to put the tweets in the kicks since it would cost me a lot more. Not to mention, if they put the tweets in there they'd hafta build the kicks bigger and it would interfere with gettin my foot on the clutch..

and btw.. ive already spent 5 grand on my system :( ahhhhhh.. im addicted.

[dawgg]

hey,
just wondering... what happened to your Polykevlars? I have a set of the 165K2s also that seem to have self destructed. The yellow cones on the mid have become extremely warped somehow. Looks like they melted. I thought it was because something is messed up with my amp. Was wondering if u had something similar happen.

My friend has a set of the 3 way poly kevlars. They definitely sound better than the 2 ways. And from what i've heard the Utopia line sounds amazing. So 3 way Utopias should sound very very nice. I can't convince myself to drop $900 on one set of speakers tho.

About the imaging issue. I've gotten different answers from people. I was told that putting the highs in the kicks is best for listening experiance because the right and left sound would be coming to u from more equal distances. But then another guy told me it's really only good for a competition system where the "listener" is a microphone. So i dunno.... Move your head into the center of the car and see if it makes a difference to u as opposed to where u'd usually sit in the car.

[Need4Spd]

whoa **** bro.. thats messed up. I just got my car back today from the audio shop. They replaced my Polykevlar 165k2's under warranty for free because they just stopped playing for no apparent reason. They were warped to hell just like yours. This is the weird part. The guys called me yesterday to ask if when I did the sound deadening in my doors I used a heat gun because they said they sell Focal PolyKev's ALL the time and have never seen anything like the warping on mine before. I explained that I had used a product called RAAMMat that doesn't require a heat gun. When I went to pick up the car today I saw the my old speakers and they are all wavy and ****. No one there could figure out what the hell happened to my speakers. Hmmm.. I wonder if it is a coincidence that it happened to you as well? Or maybe there was a temporary quality issue with the Polykev's..? I mean, ****, these speakers are not cheap and supposed to be of high quality materials... hmmmm.. when did you buy yours? Im trying to see if we got them at relatively the same time.

As for the the Utopia 3 ways.. I'm gunna wait on them for a little bit... maybe like 2-3 months. I'm still deliberating here. The thing is, my suspension is still stock.. and with my bodykit and rims my car is screaming "LOWER ME!!!". So maybe I'll take care of that and get some Teins and think about the Utopia's a little down the road.

Thanks for your input on the imaging issue as well. Like I said, the guys at my shop told me that unless I'm competing I'd be wasting my money mounting tweeters in the kicks... the cost just outweighs the benefits.. so I'm pretty much not gunna be doing that when the time comes.

[dawgg]

wow, that's really intereresting. Sounds like your speakers did the exact same thing as mine. What amp are u running? I'm using a Phoenix Gold ZX475ti to power mine. I actually have 2 paid of the 165K2s in my car. The rear ones are perfectly fine. They are also powered by the same amp. I guess it's possible that only the front channel on the amp is fuked up, but seems less likely. I had my speakers and amp install almost 2 years ago now.

I did add dynamat extreme to my doors. Used a hair dryer to heat it up a bit. I'm pretty sure that didn't effect the speakers. I think i remember seeing that the speaker cones were already slightly bent when i opened the doors to do the dynamat.

Now I'm wondering if i should send the amp out for repair or not. I'm scared that if i just install new speakers they'll be damaged also if the amp is bad. Then again, what are the chances of both our amps being bad and causing the same damage to the speakers. Maybe it's due to something else? Heat inside the door? or moisture? They're car speakers though, so they should be able to handle extreme conditions.

I agree w/ your choice to go with the Teins before the Utopias. You won't be dissapointed.

[dawgg]

hey Need4Spd,
just recently saw your post over on elitecaraudio.com about how your focals are lacking mid base. I was had been experiancing the same thing with mine also. So i assumed it was due to the door placement of the woofers. Did u try out the tips the people posted? I tried and it made quite a difference. I lowered my crossover to about 60-65hz (hard to tell because the dial isn't that accurate). Originally i thought this would be to low for the speakers, but my crossover has 24db slopes so that sound falls off pretty quick after the crossover point. I also set the tweeter to -2db on the passive crossover. Before i had assumed u'd always want the tweeter at 0db boost, but since the tweeters are so close to your head in the celica it helps to turn them down a bit. Now i definitely hear a lot more mid range. I can actually feel some vibrations coming from the woofers now. The transition from mid range to the subwoofer output is awesome now. Whereas before it seemed like a whole frequency range was missing. I also moved my 165K2 woofers that were in to rear up to to front since the front ones were all mess up but the rears were fine. This probably helped a lot too, but my warped woofers were still playing so i don't hold the swap accountable for all the improvement. The overall difference was really impressive. I sat in the garage listening to music for an hour and a half last night hehe. If u haven't tried these tweeks do them before u swap out the polykevlars for a set of utopias. Might save yourself some money.

btw, another guy on elitecaraudio.com had his polykevlar woofer warp too. It seems to be a defect with the cone material. I'm sending mine back to focal but i'm out of warrenty. Hopefully they'll still replace them. I don't even know if i want to put them back in the rear though. The imagine sounds better with just the front set playing. We'll see.....

[J3adSeed]

maybe it is moisture????? i never thought of that but its always our car door... thats the one thing they have in common. i can't see an amp doing this, what should that matter... some water gets in all car doors but maybe ours suck. i sure hope not. but i'm definately not buying focal polykevlars now, which i was about to get.

3 ways are badass. so how much were they going to charge for a kickpanel?

[J3adSeed]

i'm thinking of doing boston pro 3 ways. much cheaper and still pretty nice. i've decided to do the tweeter in the kick panel after i was convinced by the whole "why buy good speakers then not install them right," point. i just hope they'll fit ok and still leave me a dead pedal. i need a dead pedal! no one seems to understand that. but if you get this done you gotta post pics of how they did your kicks, and let me know what they're charging you for the kicks, the best i've got is 300.

[dawgg]

I haven't heard the Boston 3 ways myself, but I have heard the 2 way components and most people, including myself, say that the polykevlars are way better. Even tho i was unlucky to get one of the bad speakers I would still recommend the polykevlars. 99.9% of people haven't experianced the problem.

I read an interesting article that said that it's just as important to put the woofer in the kick panels that way the mids come at u from more equal distances. The article also said that there are somtimes problems with putting the tweeters in the kicks. I didn't full grasp the reasoning but it had something to be with different high frequencies coming at u at different volumes due to the distance and objects blocking direct line of sight. Seems like every article has a different perspective on it.

[J3adSeed]

dude, i donno, THREE celica owners having the same problem with that speaker? that scares the hell out of me. especially buying 600 dollar speakers.

[SouthSyde]

No matter what 3-way system you do, the 4 in midrange should be in a sealed chamber. It would greatly improve the sound. So, if you are going to do a 3-way setup kickpanels are a necessity unless you are going to pay fortunes for custom door panels.