JL Audio C2-650

purchaesed these along with the coax C2 in winter 2010 and rewired my entire car through a audiocontrol LC7 (which i love) and powered them up after two days of work. they fired up with no issues but I noticed something weird after 3 or 4 days of mid level listening... the tweeter would decrease its volume and it would sound like crap. I like to listen to my music fairly loud but the tweets couldn't take the power from my amp. compared to some other speakers the mid bass is lacking as well. needless to say i have disconnect the tweets and the mids sound like crap.... be very cautious or at least dont give'em too much power.

Overall I am very happy with these. I had a set of JL XR's in my old car which I loved and that is why I bought these. Very clear and GREAT bass response. Had to cut mid bass driver surrounds to install in a 2006 Grand Prix GXP, a spacer may have also worked, but depth wise they fit no problem.



Now What I Don't Like:

JL has put tweeter protectors in their Cross-Overs. This results in the tweeter dropping out from time to time. VERY annoying and makes one think there are other issues. If you are driving these with more the 75 Watts RMS you will probably experience this (I am at 110 watts RMS). It is possible to remove the protection device however they add a little resistance to the tweeter's cross-over so the highs might be a bit brighter than before. Another option is to run the tweeters at -3db or even do both. I am considering upgrading to the ZR tweeters to solve my issue as the tweeter sounds stressed when pushed. At mid volume they are VERY smooth and detailed.

I have always been a fan of JL Audio products, and once again they proved to me that they can offer great performance speakers w/o having to break the bank.

About 8-9 months ago i decided to put a new HU (Pioneer AVH-3300Bt) into my 2005 tacoma with no expectation of purchasing anything further car audio wise. After I installed the HU my stock speakers improved by quite a bit! Which made me wonder what would a decent pair of aftermarket speakers would sound like?!? Well after hours of scavenging the internet and going to local car audio shops i decided to get these (C2-650) for the front and the C2-650x's for the rear.



Because these speakers are a bit over sized (6 3/4) and have 6X9's up front i had to purchase speaker frames/mounts so they would fit into my doors enclosures. Once I had the mounts and the frames i went ahead and did the install. First thing i notice was the nice crisp highs from the silk tweeters while the speakers external crossover was set to neutral. None of that metallic "tis tis tis" tinging treble. I played around with the -3 +3 settings as well but thought 0 was right on!



I was running the speakers from my HU at what Pioneer said was 22 watts RMS but is probably closer to 12 watts per CEA Compliance. But it did not matter! The speakers sound as good as one could expect from such little power. They produced ample amounts of bass, mids, and highs!!! Now, don't get me wrong. I was not rattling my mirrors uncontrollably or anything but the speaks did a good job from low frequencies to high from HU power.



Well I could have settled with what i had seeing as I am not 18 y/o anymore and am not looking for anything other than nice crisp clean well rounded audio. But now that i had replaced my HU and speakers I couldn't resist purchasing an amplifier (Arc Audio KAR 400.4, 50w RMS X 4, but from what tests have shown Arc under rates their specs and is probably closer to 70w RMS x 4 at 4 ohms).



At the same time i purchased sound dampening material because even with the speakers being power through the HU it was causing things to rattle :-(



Installation of the amp and sound dampening material made a HUGE difference! Man those speaker hummed for the $$$. Now my mirrors were starting to rattle... okay just a little :-) Sounded good at all volumes and when eq properly almost made me think i didn't need a sub.



Yeah, of course... I decided to purchase a sub next ;-) (LJ AUdio 8w3v3-2) and ran the front and rear 6 1/2's in parallel from the amps rear channel's and the sub off the front bridged. I know not the best way to do it but working with what i got. So now with the speakers in parallel and a sub playing with them properly equalized my system is complete!



Long story short every which way I had these speakers set up they sounded great and am 100% happy with. This is not my first stereo and have tried out plenty of other compairable price wise speakers and setups and this is by far my favorite. Of course you could do better if you wanted to spend more but for the price these are above average and perfect for me!

Great speakers can hear them very well in my 65 AC Cobra, over the wind and engine noise. I have JL amp (J-320.4) driving them and an iPod.