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The Kenwood eXcelon KFC-X2C 2 3/4" midrange speaker is a good replacement for the OEM dash speaker in the FD3S. It fits in there very well if you trim the mounting tabs and grind the screw holes inward just a bit. The speaker comes in pairs, so you will have one left over. That umm, you might decide to sell in the marketplace section.
Note the center dash speaker continues to work fine with aftermarket head units if the blue amplifier enable wire is connected. From the wiring diagram, it looks like the OEM amplifier is just mixing the front left and right speaker signals to give a little bit fuller sound up front. This probably does lessen the stereo effect (since the center is outputting both left and right sounds) but I tried it with the center speaker enabled and disabled and decided it did sound better enabled. It comes with an optional low-pass inline filter that can be added to the harness, but since the OEM speaker didn't have that I left it out.
Just copying some things I learned during install that I sent to the person that bought the remaining speaker:
1) Make sure you hear sound coming out of the old speaker before you mess with installing the new one. If you don't you might not have the OEM dash speaker amp enabled - if not check to see if the blue wires (one for antenna and one external-amp-enable) from your head unit are hooked up.
2) Use the old speaker mounting holes as a template to figure out how much to deepen the new speaker's holes. Cut the connector off the old speaker to reuse. Pay attention to which is the plus wire and which is the minus wire (if I remember correctly the blue wire is plus). The new speaker doesn't have plus or minus markings on it so look at the documentation - if I remember correctly the all-black wire was plus. Please double-check all this as I might not be remembering correctly!!
3) It comes with an optional low pass filter to kill any bass that the speaker can't actually generate (looks like a big capacitor inline with the speaker wires). I just left it out because the old one didn't have anything similar, and I couldn't really tell any difference with it in - but you can test it with the filter and without and see what sounds best in your system.
When testing, make sure the new speaker is in proper orientation so sound waves are bouncing off the windshield they way they will in the final install, and not propped up aimed directly at you.
4) The old speaker is held in with three screws (not four). The new speaker will only use two. Be careful not to drop the screws into the dash when removing or installing.
Does anyone happen to know if this center speaker works on the R1 models without the bose? i have an R1 with an aftermarket head unit and pioneer speakers and couldn't get this center one to work so i removed it. based on this post is sounds like there is a separate small amp just for the center speaker?
My car is a '93 R1, so yes the center speaker works in those cars without Bose. There is a separate amplifier for the center speaker, and it needs to be enabled by your head unit (blue wire, I think the one with a stripe). I heard that this separate amplifier is in the center console somewhere. The electrical diagram shows the wiring for the center speaker and its dedicated wiring. Assuming nothing is broken, all you should need to do is make sure your head unit harness connects the separate amplifier enable (blue wire) out of the head unit.
02-11-23, 03:55 PM
