CLK C209 Mild speaker upgrade advice

[seymansey]

Morning all,

I'd like to upgrade the speakers in my 2006 C209 CLK - can anyone recommend any direct bolt in replacements which would improve upon the factory supplied units?

I'm not interested in stripping out and rewiring, or hacking up the parcel shelf to upgrade the sub, just some sympathetic bolt-ins to improve bass and mids. The car has comand fitted with no additional bose / HK.

Any suggestions, or am i asking for the world?

 

[W4E300]

I had Morel Maximo's and a Pioneer active sub put in my CLK 209 500 - fantastic. You can buy the complete set-up for under £300.00 and the improvement is staggeringly good IMO.

Sent from my iPad using MBClub UK

 

[V12]

You will need some adapters CT25MC12 MERCEDES CLK W209 2002 - 2009 165MM FRONT DOOR SPEAKER ADAPTOR KIT | eBay

And a set of 165mm speakers of your choice.

The standard speakers generally aren't the limitation, it's the amplifier in the headunit.

Changing the speakers alone will have such a small impact on the sound and sometimes aftermarket speakers are actually worse than the factory ones if you don't change the headunit/amplifier as well.

 

[Halcyon Days]

Agree with V12 - I upgraded just the headunit and found that the standard speakers were actually very good! It was the Audio20 that was letting everything down.
You can upgrade the headunit to something like a JVC double-din unit with Mp3, DAB etc + wiring kit + fascia adapter for about £300 which is much more of a "bang for buck" than doing the speakers on their own.

 

[vealige]

Acoustically cars in general are terrible and as said above you don't tend to get a decent improvement in sound without changing the headunit/amp. To be fair you are better off spending the time to sound deaden the car to imrpove the current sound it is surprising how much of a difference this makes and it forms the bedrock of any good ICE install removes vibration and improves bass etc... it also makes the car generally quieter also depending on how mad you go with it lol.

The HK system is actually pretty good for a standard car but it is spoilt by vibrations etc....

 

[Halcyon Days]

Three answers and three opinions! ;-)
1) Change your head-unit
2) Change your speakers
3) sound-proof the car

I would still go for option 1 first, 2 if you feel like you need to and finally, I don't know if 3 - sound-proofing - will be much benefit in a convertible - The roof lets a fair amount of noise in...



4) add a sub :-D

 

[seymansey]

Thanks all for the posts - so what would be my options to add an amp, either mercedes or aftermarket? I have seen the existance of a mobridge MOST based amp, any experience of those?

 

[Halcyon Days]

are you talking about one of These? as that seems to me just a pre-amp, rather than an actual amp. So you still need an amp, it seems a pointless cost to me if your head unit has speaker lever outs (mine did) then there are amps out there that will happily accept this as input, such as the JBL which can be bought for £200 or so... You still have all the "fun" for re-wiring for power, speakers etc etc..

I guess it's how much value you put on keeping the OEM head unit? my personal opinion was the pros for replacing it outweighed the cons. (easier wiring, better functionality, better sound, still have steering wheel controls..)

Maybe tell us what YOU really want from the sound in your car? :-D

 

[richard]

The W209 CLK is really interesting. You can change the front and rear speakers in the front doors and make a massive difference if you pick the correct speakers (Morel !) and use dynamat cleverly. The latter part is important.

- Unless you are a bass junkie there seems to be super levels of bass without adding a sub.

You can make it even better with an amp, but particularly on the W209 we'd just do what I suggest above if budget is limited especially if you have COMAND.

Dont use the mobridge unless changing everything - an amp with speaker level input works very well.

I'm not going to give away exactly where we put the dynamat!

Richard