I bought a set of windshield pilar trim pieces with the intent to mold some tweeters into them. This will be my first attempt at this. I've built sub-boxes and such before but have not worked with molding fiberglass and such.

Just wanted to see if anyone else has done this and has pics.

Thanks,
Jeff

I don't have pics, but it's really quite easy.

What tweets did you get? Did you get mounts and/or small enclosures?

If so, this gets REAL easy.

Screw the enclosure to the pillar. Then use bondo to build it up and fill in the gaps. once built up, use a cheese grater to smooth, sand to a nice finish. I recommend then covering the entire pillar with a nice fabric. Something like alcantara.

I haven't bought the tweeters yet. What you posted is pretty much what I thought of doing.

Recomendations for nice mid-priced tweeters would be appreciated too. Like under $100.

Just playing devil's advocate here...

For good imaging and true quality sound, you want the tweeter within 12" of the driver it's paired with. If the tweeter is powered directly from the amp, and it's a true active component, location doesn't matter. However, if it's a passive crossover tweeter you want it closer to the speaker.

For instance, a tweeter down in the kick panel next to the speaker will sound better because it's imaged properly, than that same tweeter on the A-pillar. Sure, it's higher and aimed straight at your ears, but you're losing quality the further it's moved away from the speaker.

Oh, also, your highs might seem a lot brighter, maybe even harsh, when they are that high in the cabin.

DB speaks the truth.

Hmm. I have not yet removed the covers on the kick panel speakers but with them being down by my feet it gets hard to hear any sort of vocals when I have the top off and the volume up. So I figured that if I mounted some tweeters on the pilars a couple of inches up from the dash it would improve the sound staging. The previous owner has removed all of the Bose equipment.

Sounds like the previous owner did not do a good job of picking audio components.

Instead of moving locations I think a better start would be to investigate exactly what is installed, power handling specifications specifically, and how they are powered.

The amplifier, assuming one is still used, must be matched to the drivers. If one or the other is a mismatch then you'll encounter poor sound...which you seem to be doing right now.

I have a '77. Tops off, loud side pipes...I can EASILY hear my stereo system. I have kick panel mounted mids and tweets in the door panels, roughly 10" apart. A sub is in back for low frequencies.

Before you start buying and building pillar pods for tweeters like you see in Hondas, do some homework on what exactly you have and how it's powered.

Post back here with your findings and we can help you plan a better sounding system using the least amount of money and effort.

Just a tip, in my experience, 90% of all car audio is re-done multiple times because it wasn't done right the first time...or second time...or sometimes even the third time.

Sorry, I have to beg to differ on a couple of points.
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Not sure where your reasoning is here. If anything this is less true with a dedicated amp channel and active crossover. Active crossovers tend to have steeper roll-offs (12, 18, or 24 dB per octave), whereas passive crossovers have more shallow slopes (think 6dB or 12dB/octave) lessening the effects of equidistance.

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Distance between the individual drivers is not nearly as important time-alignment of the sounds coming from each. That is, if the location of the tweeter is equidistant to that of the midrange/midbass, relative to the listening position, the different frequencies should arrive at the ear at the same time, regardless of the distance between each driver. However, since spatially the brain can detect the direction from which sound emanates, it is still best to keep the distances between drivers minimal.

To the OP:
Tweeters are one piece of audio equipment I will never skimp on. Get a high quality piece with good off-axis response and pair it with midrange or midbass drivers of similar quality and you'll be in aural bliss.

In the C5, I installed 1" Dynaudio domes in each door (where one is pointed at my knee, the other pointed toward the passenger's knee) and listening to the system you'd swear the tweeters (and midranges) were mounted up in the dash at the base of the windshield.

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Simply because in an active system the tweeter is a stand alone driver with it's own dedicated channel. In a passive system, yes the drop off is lessened, but the tweeter is paired with a driver on the same channel. Therefor there isn't anything it needs to be time aligned with that the processor doesn't account for, such as other driver's in the system.

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Not all active, electronic crossovers have time alignment correction circuitry; in fact very few do.

Time alignment problems are borne out of transducer location, regardless of filtering method (passive or active) and must be corrected either by "padding" the passive network, or using a DSP in an active system. Or ultimately, correcting speaker placement.

Therefore, placement is still crucial. And as I stated before, active crossovers may actually worsen the effects of poor transducer placement.

The easy fix is to build a stroked big block, put the top down, and open the exhaust cutouts. It removes the want for time alignment, really.

Wow, way too in depth for me. You guys really know your audio!!

+1 on the big block.

How about just open headers and take out all of the audio bs?

having experienced Nelson's 496 with cutouts, that's what he was aluding to... ppl 2 miles away don't need to worry about audio systems...