Tweeter Location?

They're located under the grills near the A pillars.

 

I actually think the current location works pretty well, since they are facing up slightly towards the front seats, plus I imagine there's some sound bouncing off the windshield. Another option would be to place them high on the door panels.

 

It's my understanding that Tweeters don't bounce sound. If you replace the "squawkers" or however they are spelled in the front, you will need to put the tweeters on the A pillar. I put my rear tweeters in with my replacement 6.5's. You do know you will lose bluetooth and everything replacing the JBL amp right?

 

My understanding is the tweeters' sound will bounce off a hard surface, such as a windshield. I've had several cars with tweeters that used this technique.

 

Agreed - there are several posts on squaker location. If I was replacing / swapping, i'd look into a 3.5" mid/tweeter. It would take a slight amount of cutting, but you'd get great sound improvement.

Keep in mind, the door speaker must match the tweeter/squaker/mid. You'll need a crossover, and speakers with similar sensitivities...

There are a few posts on this - I know way back when, I took decent pics with a tape measure to show the space available. http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-iii...ust-installed-new-nav-dvd-head-unit-pics.html has one pic...

A little cutting of the squaker area will be required - but a 3 - 3.5" should fit.

 

Here's the post showing speaker location, removal and size.... Note, once the tweeter is out, there is gobs of depth...

Another alternative is to remove the tweeter, but use it as a bracket to mount your aftermarket tweeter to (cut out the squaker)...

 

High frequencies definitely bounce off hard surfaces. It is low frequencies that are non direction. Mostly sub 120hz. Tweeter location in the Prius is better than most cars. A small coaxial speaker would be ideal.

 

crossover frequency for squawker or can we just use tweeter?

I had never heard of a squawker before buying a prius.

Not even jbl seems to sell small midrange/tweeters. So this requires a 3.5" full range speaker in the front squawker location plus a component woofer in the front door. If I do that what crossover would I set to match the speakers. Can anyone suggest speakers that would be best in this configuration?

I was planning to put a component woofer in the front door, with its tweeter in the dash location, and a coaxial speaker from the same family in the rear doors. I have a non jbl system. If I do a mid/tweeter up front will it sound better.

I'm guessing that even with a new head unit and speakers and likely an amp, I still won't have enough base, so I'll likely do a steath install of a small powered subwoofer under a seat or above the spare. I'm not going to do the work until January, but would like speaker suggestions in case I see good sales before then.

 

yes

 

You could opt for a mounting method that doesn't permanently modify the car.

My tweeters were way to large to go in the stock location and mounting them "hovering" above the midrange was not an option either so I just made some generic pods that sit in the small corner windows on the dash. They are close enough to the stock tweeter location and with a good head unit with digital time alignment you will have no issues with proper imaging. Lead vocals are dead center and floating at about the MFD level (2005 Prius). Some might consider it ugly but they work for me. The beauty is that nothing was permanently modified and there is no adhesive used to mount them. They just pressure fit in that location.

I realize you have a 2010 but a little imagination could make something similar work if you are in a bind with tweeter locations.

http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-ii-...iamond-audio-midranges-installed-finally.html

 

Here is the post with squakers removed, showing size of mount area. http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-iii...onics/68491-front-dash-tweeter-removal-4.html

3.5" could be put in - the problems are:

You'll need to cut in the dash area (it could fit - just a lot of dremelling...)
The plastic cover / speaker grill thingy has perforations for sound to come through - but only like a 2" circular area. I think this would be OK - because most 3.5" have the tweeter centered, and you'd have room for mids to come through.

I just bought the Infinity Reference components (6030cs). They're like $200 at Crutchfield, but they were $102 on Amazon (loving that next day air for $3.99 - but this only qualified for free shipping).

I think I'm going to *try* to mount them in the bottom of the A pillar, add an amp with a notch filter, and find a way to power *both* squaker, and tweeter - the idea being the squaker can fill a bit in the mid vocals up front, without competing with the tweeter)...