Thanks fabbrisd. I found them when you suggested them but was wondering if they were original steg.
How are these compared to rainbow or ground zero ones?


Regards.

 

Hi all

Am a novice in any car audio and need some advise/recommendations
Recently bought a c250d s205 (estate/wagon) with the stock A20 sound system, like everyone I am experiencing the lack of omph!
I plan to hide the sub/amp under the trunks tray and would not want to take up any boot space.
I usually listen to trance/euro and have a budget of anywhere from $500-$700 +/- $100 to upgrade the sound system.

Used to own a golf with a kicker hs8 hideaway compact powered sub under the passenger seat, all else was stock and was happy with that.
I went to my local audio shop and was told if I were to buy a compact active sub like the kicker hideaway and place it below the trunk tray, I might not experience the bass.
He recommended me to get at least a 10" sub box and a Clarion WF2520B 10" Single Shallow-Mount Boxed Subwoofer fitted nicely in the boot, along with a Alpine MRV-M500 V-Power Mono Amplifier.

My bro was nice and said I could have his old sound system Alpine SBR-S8D4 R Series 8” Compact Subwoofer and Kicker KX400.1 1-Channel Mono Car Amplifier. The alpine would not fit snugly but I might remove the boot lining to find additional space. Would the alpine+kick setup be alright? Or Should I take his amp and buy the 10" Clarion subwoofer 10" > 8"?

After reading the entire 17 pages on this thread, I gather that I have 2 options with my budget
1) Sub+amp+remote bass controller and leave all stock
2) Sub+amp+remote bass controller and upgrade the front 4" speakers and potentially the rear to coaxials and run them at stock 20w? off the A20 HU? For the coaxials setup to work, they have to be less than 40mm in mounting deapth?
3) Sub+amp+remote bass controller and add 2 front 1" tweeters to the front and run them off the front speakers?
4) Any other recommendations?

Which would you guys choose? Would you buy other brands?
Am from Australia, choices are pretty slim and will have to buy local stock I guess.
Thanks in advance

 

Anyone know where I can get one of this? I'm about to installsan amp for my speakers but don't want to cut oem wires.

Regards.

 

Sorry, is it possible to have some links to buy the cheapest equipment possible to improve / replace sound system ? Thank you.

 

I received my STEG BZ40A from germany last week and plugged them to my amplifier (JBL Club 4505 and audiocontrol LCQ-1). Cant say i dont like the sound but the tweeters are killing my ears. Even with LCQ-1 equalizer at 8K, 2K and 1K at almost zero gain (also factory radio eq), tweeters are extremely loud. Amp crossover is set to Hi pass.

Anyone with some experience on Steg speakers?

regards.

 

Did the STEG BZ40A come with any crossovers in the cables?

 

Yes, there was a couple small crossover in the cables and they were connected.

Ended up changing the LCQ-1 for a Mosconi 6to8 pro DSP and gladen 3 way speakers. Now car sounds like a dream and stegs are sitting somewhere in my office gathering some dust. Total waste of money.

Regards.

 

I think i will be doing a complete Match (audiotec fisher) upgrade kit. Stay tuned.

 

Speaking of this, Audiotec just released specific Match speakers that apparently fit the door speakers. Has anyone done this and/or has information about the install?

Very interested.

 

Around $1000 usd if you replace the whole set including center speaker and rear surrounds. You have an option of coaxial or component speakers for the doors. Your choice based on your current trim or you can mix them front and back.

Manual is attached.

 

Thanks, I have the base system and was planning on replacing the four-door speakers, throwing an amplified bazooka sub in the back and calling it a day. I've read mixed things on the speaker connectors though, do you know if they require splicing, or can they literally just be plugged right into the existing factory harness?

 

All of these upgrade sets are plug and play with oem connectors and crossovers included.

 

There is also an Mercedes upgrade set from Eton.


https://www.eton-gmbh.com/en/product...cedes-upgrade/

Note. Front subs are 2 ohm speakers.

Here is video of the Eton Mercedes speaker set install (in german, turn on english subtitles)

You get a harness to connect left/right front bass speakers to the same channel. (If you are base)

 

Wow that video was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks. Are we able to get the Eton set in the states? Wonder how they compare to the Match line up.

 

Available on Ebay at a premium.

I believe Eton is considered higher quality and is more expensive.

Match is all 4 ohm speakers and they provided a manual with useful information, so they are a win for me. Plus a tiny bit cheaper.

I wonder what they would sound like with just the factory Burmester amp and tune?

I will be using an Audison dsp amp but i am curious.

 

One other question. In your opinion, for the front doors specifically, would it be better to use the Match components with the separate twitter to put in the factory tweeter location or just keep it simple and use the coaxials? I understand there may be a slight improvement in terms of separation but is that really the only benefit?

 

Your choice or what your trim can support. If you don't have a factory location for tweeters go with all coaxial or put component in front and coaxial in rear doors.

From what I read component speakers are better.

 

I did this a few weeks ago on a 2018 glc300, which seems to have virtually identical doors and panels to the c-class. This car has the (horrible) base audio. I got the Match components from ebay, but I think Crutchfield may have them as well. They are expensive for what you get but they fit perfectly. The tweeters fit in the existing tweeter port in mirror sail panel, which you have to remove before you take off the door trim. The passive crossover on the Match set is in a separate small box, about the size of a 9V battery. I hot-melt glued it just below the mirror sail, so that I could remove the sail and adjust the 3-position level switch (0db, -3db, -6db) on the side of the crossover if needed, without removing the door panel. I have it on 0db and that seems good to me, but I have high-frequency hearing loss; they may be too bright at that level for someone else. The door speakers I removed, as many have pointed out, are unbelievably cheesy. If they have $5 in those speakers, I would be surprised.

I went with the Match because I wanted plug and play for the first-step of the audio improvement. The Match manual says the tweeter plugs into the harness, but with the base system, there is no tweeter plug, so you will have to splice wiring or make a splitter cable. However ,when you look at the speaker connecitons you will realize that they are just 2-pin JST connections (old PCs used 3 and 4 pin JST for floppy drives, now they seemed to be used a lot in robotic and school electronics projects; they are cheap and readily available online) I had some female to 2 male splitters, but that is the wrong gender combination so I had to make my own.

I soldered the wires to make the Y and used shrink-tubing for insulation. See the pic below. My solder skills are not great, so if it looks lumpy, don't make fun. JST does not have locks, so I used a drop of hot-melt glue to lock the connections after plugging into the harness. The pins fit tight so I don't anticipate problems. The pin JST connections were shrouded, so I had to trim the shroud with a razor for them to fit.

Even with the stock electronics, the Match speaker are noticeably better. There is now some high end and the midrange is much clearer. I listen primarily to classical and opera and the muffled-sounding stock speakers, totally lacking in treble, were driving me nuts. I just received a Match PP62DSP (Ebay from England with Mercedes T-adapter included, could not find a US vendor). I hope to install it next weekend. I also have some NOS Helix P206 6 1/2 speakers that I bought pretty cheap from an Ebay vendor. They are pretty thin and I hope they will fit the floor-wells. I thought as long as I was going AudioTec Fisher, what the hell. So far, about $850 all told, and a fair amount of time. Ask me in a couple of weeks.


speaker/tweeter splitter made from JST connectors

Speaker and tweeter wiring to harness blue wire/yellow connector was original plug to speaker. Red wire goes to Match crossover and tweeter.

 

thanks, please keep us posted on how the amp install goes. I did not know that about the tweeter wiring so thank you for sharing.

 

Wondering if it would be easier and relatively equal in terms of sound quality to just install the Match coaxials instead of the components to avoid the whole wire splicing? Any thoughts?

 

I can't speak to the sound difference between components and coax, I have no experience with side-to-side comparison, and I have little experience with car audio systems in general, so I am reluctant to say. Feature wise you give up the cross-over box and the ability to attenuate the tweeters, though that doesn't seem like much of a problem.

I was also concerned about the lack of built in wiring to make the components plug-and-play. It appears that the Bemester system has tweeter wiring, and that replacement seems to be what Match is aiming for. While I hoped for the best I didn't expect a cable. Knowing what I know now, I would have probably just gotten a coaxial system and been done with it. Its cheaper and easier. Making a cable is easy, but you have to round up the parts and the solder and shrink wrap and glue gun...that all takes more time than you expect. The upside is that I no longer fear modifying the sound system. Although, for ~$200, you might have thought Match could have thrown in a couple of $0.50 splitters to make the set really drop in.

 

Nice job installing the Match component set, that's convenient that no mods are required for speaker/tweeter mounting. The speaker swap alone is a huge upgrade, but once you add the dsp/amp you will have a whole new sound system =)

I just installed the Focal ES 100K component set, it was not quite as easy though. The speaker is typical 4-hole, so some alignment/manipulation is required to install. The tweeter required some trimming of the inside of the door sail then hot glue to mount. The biggest drawback of the Focal kits is the large crossover required, but I actually fished all the wiring to the back of the door panel and into the door pocket accessible from the inside (theres a factory hole). Then I just wired it up in the pocket and double-sided taped it to the rear so it's not visible, with the added advantage of access to the dip switches if need be. They sound great, and the set can be had on ebay for ~$400.

 

For someone who is handy... 5-Channel Match/Helix cheap ... but you will probably need correct cables which are not necessarily cheap..

https://www.ebay.com/itm/BRAND-NEW-I...P/283546706490

 

I can't speak to the sound quality between components and coaxial. For installation, the coaxial would be "take them out of the box and plug them in". The crossover cable was not difficult but the parts and tools laying around, it always takes more time than you expect.There are probably faster, ways to install.

You do give up any control over the tweeter level with coaxial. I can't say if that is a problem or not. Maybe the only real regret to the component system, is mostly imagined: If later I want to put Focals in the front door and move the Match speakers to the rear door (and I might) I would not have tweeters in the back door, and I would have if I had gotten coaxial. Lots of ifs there, and many upgrades dont worry about tweeters in the back doors anyway.

by the way I wrote a version of this message last night and it said it would go to the moderator. I think it was lost, but maybe it will reappear as a semi double post.

 

Thanks for the reply. I appreciate the insight. One other question, what was the combination of genders for the splitter that you made? Male to two female or opposite? Thinking of possibly just buying one already made.