B&O upgrade questions

[DangerCloud]

Hello. So I just got a component set that includes the woofer, a separate tweeter and a crossover. My question is would I be better off swapping the tweeters with the stock tweeters? Or should I keep the stock tweeters and install the new tweeters in the door with the crossover?
If I swap tweeters then the new tweeter gets full power and no crossover and if I put it in the door then it shares power with the woofer but gets the signal from the crossover. What should I do? Thanks.

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[Darnon]

Depending on how handy you are with a soldering iron you could pull the high-pass filter capacitor from inside the crossover (or the OE tweeters, but that'd also require some cutting) and add in series it to your aftermarket tweeter.

 

[voldemartian]

I'm planning on upgrading my system with tax monies next year but people on this forum have noticed the clips holding the factory tweeters in place are a strange proprietary system and always need to be heavily modified to hold an aftermarket tweeter. I would suggest adding new tweeters in the door when you upgrade the system unless you are comfortable hacking up the plastic around the stock tweeters. Personally, I'm scared they might rattle if I do it wrong so I'm planning on putting new tweeters in the door panel somewhere.

 

[LeersMav]

I would leave everything as it is until the warranty has expired.

If you have ANY issues with the sound after you install any of the B&O speakers (& its related), the dealer will not fix or replace anything under warranty since aftermarket mod was done.

Just a word of caution.

 

[Darnon]

I'm planning on upgrading my system with tax monies next year but people on this forum have noticed the clips holding the factory tweeters in place are a strange proprietary system and always need to be heavily modified to hold an aftermarket tweeter. I would suggest adding new tweeters in the door when you upgrade the system unless you are comfortable hacking up the plastic around the stock tweeters. Personally, I'm scared they might rattle if I do it wrong so I'm planning on putting new tweeters in the door panel somewhere.

I'd take having to potentially hack the tweeter retention (which will be obscured by a cover anyways) over having to hack into the door to mount a tweeter which will be visible. Also most 3/4" tweeters shouldn't have an issue with the stock retention as, if anything, they're too small. I just put some wraps of 3M VHB around and wedged the suckers in.

 

[colinl]

Darnon covered pretty much all of it at a high level.

A bit more detail:
The B&O system is separately amplifying the dash tweeter and door midrange. Component systems are typically made to run one channel into the crossover and then it splits into midrange and tweeter. Even if the component set supports bi-amping, there's no easy way to wire it for use with the B&O amp. I'm curious if it's feasible to splice it inline in the ACM harness. It could be that someone has already done this, but I don't think I've seen any pics or discussion about it, if they have.

The B&O dash tweeter has a high pass filter soldered on it. If you replace the tweeter and don't filter the replacement tweeter, it could sound harsh at high volume and will likely fail at some point, both due to trying to play low frequencies.

You could easily disconnect the stock tweeters and install the crossovers inline with the door speakers, and then surface mount the new tweeter on the door (easy) or B-pillar (slightly harder, but easier than messing with the dash). However, this is going to halve the power the midrange speaker gets and the B&O amp isn't huge to start with. I don't think this would be a good option for anyone that likes it loud but if you are happy with the system below 20 volume then probably this would work fine, and you'd just be turning up higher than you had previously to get the same output.

Another possibility is splicing a crossover into the tweeter output right at the B&O amp. There's a diagram of the pinout and you would have to be comfortable taking apart the insulation on the harness to get access to the tweeter speaker wires.

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