JBL Speaker Only Upgrade Install/Write-up

[gaterose]

One of my wife's dash speakers went out recently and this gave me an opportunity to upgrade my Tacoma to a Morel 3-way component setup which then freed up the Kickers I had been using to upgrade the stock JBL door & dash speakers. May upgrade the HU, sub, and hatch speakers later, but this is a tremendous improvement for now and solved the blown speaker problem and my justifying an upgrade to 3-way components in the taco problem.

In doing this I found that the write-ups had a lot of missing photos and/or blurred photos lost in the Great Photobucket Purge so thought I'd post a new one. It was also difficult finding the correct info about the wiring for the JBL dash speakers since my 2014 wiring colors did not match what I saw in other posts.

Here's what I used -
Kicker DS 2 Way 3-1/2 (DSC350) - Dash
Kicker CS 3-way 6x9 (43CSC6934) - Front Door
Kicker CS 2-Way 6-3/4 (43CSC674) - Rear Door

I already had mounting and wiring adapters for the doors from my Tacoma so I just needed to figure out something for the dash.

I used the Trail4R write up for removing the dash speakers. I was surprised that the JBL speakers actually looked pretty hefty, with separate wiring for the tweeter and woofer. It also looks different from all the other photos that I came across in my previous research.

I finally found a post from [MENTION=384008]bennecc[/MENTION] that told me how to figure out how to wire the tweeters (peel back the shrink wrap and see what goes where), even though my colors don't seem to match his. I combined the yellow + green for my positive and the black + purple wires and for negative then crimped on proper connectors.

You can see that I also trimmed the speaker grille back since the speaker is now larger than cone/director and I also trimmed the stock mounting bracket to create a custom mount.

Driver -

Driver installed -

Passenger -

Passenger installed -

Used the videos from TacoTunes for the door panels with one caveat pointed out by [MENTION=83083]rigtec[/MENTION]

I wish I'd seen this before I did the front doors. Most door panels are removed by pulling all the clips on the lower portion out then lifting up to raise the panel out of the door channel. The 5th gen 4R is not designed this way, although it can be done with patience and care. Instead what you should do is pull the top portion away the same as the bottom portion, i.e. toward your body not upward.

You can see in these photos the top piece has a second set of clips and it's much easier to separate the two pieces.

Front door panels/speakers -
TacoTunes video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AB4l5y6Sa8

Installed -

Rear door panels/speakers -
TacoTunes video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xfjJBh_KzM

Installed -

[/url]

I was concerned about the JBL system being 2Ω and the speakers being 4Ω, but they are very clear and very loud. The only noise I hear now is when I play older compressed MP3s, tracks with low compression are crystal clear. I was also very surprised by the increase in bass response.

 

[rigtec]

One of my wife's dash speakers went out recently and this gave me an opportunity to upgrade my Tacoma to a Morel 3-way component setup which then freed up the Kickers I had been using to upgrade the stock JBL door & dash speakers. May upgrade the HU, sub, and hatch speakers later, but this is a tremendous improvement for now and solved the blown speaker problem and my justifying an upgrade to 3-way components in the taco problem.

In doing this I found that the write-ups had a lot of missing photos and/or blurred photos lost in the Great Photobucket Purge so thought I'd post a new one. It was also difficult finding the correct info about the wiring for the JBL dash speakers since my 2014 wiring colors did not match what I saw in other posts.

Here's what I used -
Kicker DS 2 Way 3-1/2 (DSC350) - Dash
Kicker CS 3-way 6x9 (43CSC6934) - Front Door
Kicker CS 2-Way 6-3/4 (43CSC674) - Rear Door

I already had mounting and wiring adapters for the doors from my Tacoma so I just needed to figure out something for the dash.

I used the Trail4R write up for removing the dash speakers. I was surprised that the JBL speakers actually looked pretty hefty, with separate wiring for the tweeter and woofer. It also looks different from all the other photos that I came across in my previous research.

I finally found a post from [MENTION=384008]bennecc[/MENTION] that told me how to figure out how to wire the tweeters (peel back the shrink wrap and see what goes where), even though my colors don't seem to match his. I combined the yellow + green for my positive and the black + purple wires and for negative then crimped on proper connectors.

You can see that I also trimmed the speaker grille back since the speaker is now larger than cone/director and I also trimmed the stock mounting bracket to create a custom mount.

Driver -

Driver installed -

Passenger -

Passenger installed -

Used the videos from TacoTunes for the door panels with one caveat pointed out by [MENTION=83083]rigtec[/MENTION]

I wish I'd seen this before I did the front doors. Most door panels are removed by pulling all the clips on the lower portion out then lifting up to raise the panel out of the door channel. The 5th gen 4R is not designed this way, although it can be done with patience and care. Instead what you should do is pull the top portion away the same as the bottom portion, i.e. toward your body not upward.

You can see in these photos the top piece has a second set of clips and it's much easier to separate the two pieces.

Front door panels/speakers -
TacoTunes video - YouTube

Installed -

Rear door panels/speakers -
TacoTunes video - YouTube

Installed -

[/url]

I was concerned about the JBL system being 2Ω and the speakers being 4Ω, but they are very clear and very loud. The only noise I hear now is when I play older compressed MP3s, tracks with low compression are crystal clear. I was also very surprised by the increase in bass response.

"GREAT JOB gaterose!!!"

...One of the best I've seen so far! I'm not sure if you're planning to add a Sub, but if so, I did a tutorial a few years back; NOT on which is the best one to install, but "What they do, how they work, the difference between a regular bass speaker/transducer, and an ACTUAL "Low frequency wavefront reproducer" cuz they're very different, and their jobs are NOT comparable!

I'm not trying to convince anyone to do what I did... but just to dispell ALL of the myths, wives-tales, marketing schemes, folklore, and the like! Here's one of my threads on the subject:

...got bass?

You've done an EXCELLENT job gatorose; I have a real bad habit of forgeting to take photos when I'm working on my truck, then when done, I'll say: "Opps" ...I should've snapped a few shots before I started the dissasembly... lol! Thanks for your post w/photos!'Best to you',

rig, Cheers!

 

[TFT4RL]

Thank you for this! I just purchased a 16 Limited and hate the sound of the JBL system. It is missing so much detail. I was going to replace my dash speakers but when I pulled them out, I wasnt sure what to do with the wiring. I couldnt find much on replacing the JBL speakers. I may give this a go!

 

[nglayton]

Here's what I used -
Kicker DS 2 Way 3-1/2 (DSC350) - Dash
Kicker CS 3-way 6x9 (43CSC6934) - Front Door
Kicker CS 2-Way 6-3/4 (43CSC674) - Rear Door

What $$$ did this run you?

PS. the strike through txt is confusing as hell, it's completely out of context for me. Why not just delete it if you are cutting and pasting stuff from a taco post?

 

[gaterose]

What $$$ did this run you?

PS. the strike through txt is confusing as hell, it's completely out of context for me. Why not just delete it if you are cutting and pasting stuff from a taco post?

It was around $150 all in, hard to say since the door speakers came out of my Tacoma (as it says in the strike through) and were purchased 2 years ago.

ps. Sorry for the confusion but it’s definitely in the same context as the rest of the post. Strike through = “maybe I shouldn’t say this.” It’s a joke. She got these specific speakers because I wanted even better speakers in my Tacoma but already had the Kickers.

 

[llDemonll]

The 3.5" in the dash and the coaxial in the doors is an interesting choice, though since you already had those speakers I understand the choice.

Normally you wouldn't want the tweeters down by your feet for the front sound-stage in a car. Most people go with 3.5" in the dash because they're just replacing those speakers, but if replacing the door speakers as well then the component / tweeter setup would be better.

Pictures of taking the door apart are awesome; I keep reading people saying how annoying it is but the detail pics help understand why it's that way.

 

[gaterose]

The 3.5" in the dash and the coaxial in the doors is an interesting choice, though since you already had those speakers I understand the choice.

Normally you wouldn't want the tweeters down by your feet for the front sound-stage in a car. Most people go with 3.5" in the dash because they're just replacing those speakers, but if replacing the door speakers as well then the component / tweeter setup would be better.

I went with these speakers because it made more sense to me than a component set. Since the crossover is built into the HU, it is only sending higher freqs to the dash location and lower freqs to the door. The stock setup is a 2-3/4 2-way in the dash and a woofer in the door. This is a 3-3/4 2-way in the dash and a woofer (with non-functional tweeters since the HU isn't sending HF to the front door) in the door. Spending extra money just to eliminate the tweeters didn't make sense to me.

A component set with the stock JBL HU would require intricate wiring and signal reintegration or relying on the integral JBL crossover and throwing out the aftermarket crossover and most important part of a component set (also the piece that makes component sets so expensive).

If we ever swap the HU, I'll prob go with a 3-way component setup like I have in the Taco.

 

[4Person]

I was concerned about the JBL system being 2Ω and the speakers being 4Ω, but they are very clear and very loud. The only noise I hear now is when I play older compressed MP3s, tracks with low compression are crystal clear. I was also very surprised by the increase in bass response.

[MENTION=50591]gaterose[/MENTION] Nice write-up - I wish I would have read that before digging into replacing the front doors and dash speakers on my 15 Limited with JBL. It would have made it a lot easier, but eventually I figured it out. These well documented tutorials are few and far between for the 5th gens with JBL.

I was curious if you noticed difference with your sub remaining at 2ohm while all your speakers switched to 4ohm? I switched out the dash with the JL Audio C2-350x that you see here in the forum alot, and then the front doors with JL Audio C2-690tx 3-ways, but after a few days I had to take them out and return them. I have the stock HU and ended up fading the signal 3/4 to the front, turning the volume up by 10 (from normal), and then the bass at minus 3. Still, as soon as a hip hop song came on the Spotify list, the stock sub and rear speakers would be booming too much for their own good and ruin the clarity that I was getting from the new front speakers. I imagine part of this problem is solved by replacing the rear door speakers with 4ohm also, but I was still curious if you had to compensate with the volume, fade, or bass in order to keep the 4ohm/2ohm working together well?

I know it's been a few months since you originally posted this - have you made any upgrades since then?

 

[gaterose]

[MENTION=50591]gaterose[/MENTION] Nice write-up - I wish I would have read that before digging into replacing the front doors and dash speakers on my 15 Limited with JBL. It would have made it a lot easier, but eventually I figured it out. These well documented tutorials are few and far between for the 5th gens with JBL.

I was curious if you noticed difference with your sub remaining at 2ohm while all your speakers switched to 4ohm? ... I was still curious if you had to compensate with the volume, fade, or bass in order to keep the 4ohm/2ohm working together well?

I know it's been a few months since you originally posted this - have you made any upgrades since then?

Thanks! I agree, I had a very hard time finding a good writeup for the JBL system and it looked like my speakers were not the same as some of the threads.

I think that replacing the rear at the same time may have helped me a lot over you, since I'm not having noise issues with the rear. We hadn't noticed anything different with the sub either, the bass seems heavier since we now have better woofers in the doors but nothing distorts or sounds like it's being pushed too hard.

I honestly don't remember making any changes to the settings. I remember being afraid the 2/4ohm thing could be a problem but I was happy with the sound on the first drive. No updates to the audio since this post.

 

[TheNicestGuy24]

This write up only refers to the 4R's with the JBL system? Is it the same for non-JBL equipped 4R's?

2011 SR5, no nav no JBL

 

[gaterose]

This write up only refers to the 4R's with the JBL system? Is it the same for non-JBL equipped 4R's?

2011 SR5, no nav no JBL

The dash speaker wiring would be the biggest difference between JBL and non-JBL. There are a ton of other good write-ups for non-JBL 4runners if you google or search the forum though.

I swapped all of these speakers from my non-JBL Tacoma and the only real difference was the dash wiring.

 

[TheNicestGuy24]

Great, thanks!

 

[2019TRDPRO]

Im so confused i have a 2019 TRD PRO 4RUNNER WITH THE JBL STEREO, and I read a few places it says I need capacitors for the tweeters is there a reason you didn't use that?


Thank you in advance for your help...

One of my wife's dash speakers went out recently and this gave me an opportunity to upgrade my Tacoma to a Morel 3-way component setup which then freed up the Kickers I had been using to upgrade the stock JBL door & dash speakers. May upgrade the HU, sub, and hatch speakers later, but this is a tremendous improvement for now and solved the blown speaker problem and my justifying an upgrade to 3-way components in the taco problem.

In doing this I found that the write-ups had a lot of missing photos and/or blurred photos lost in the Great Photobucket Purge so thought I'd post a new one. It was also difficult finding the correct info about the wiring for the JBL dash speakers since my 2014 wiring colors did not match what I saw in other posts.

Here's what I used -
Kicker DS 2 Way 3-1/2 (DSC350) - Dash
Kicker CS 3-way 6x9 (43CSC6934) - Front Door
Kicker CS 2-Way 6-3/4 (43CSC674) - Rear Door

I already had mounting and wiring adapters for the doors from my Tacoma so I just needed to figure out something for the dash.

I used the Trail4R write up for removing the dash speakers. I was surprised that the JBL speakers actually looked pretty hefty, with separate wiring for the tweeter and woofer. It also looks different from all the other photos that I came across in my previous research.

I finally found a post from [MENTION=384008]bennecc[/MENTION] that told me how to figure out how to wire the tweeters (peel back the shrink wrap and see what goes where), even though my colors don't seem to match his. I combined the yellow + green for my positive and the black + purple wires and for negative then crimped on proper connectors.

You can see that I also trimmed the speaker grille back since the speaker is now larger than cone/director and I also trimmed the stock mounting bracket to create a custom mount.

Driver -

Driver installed -

Passenger -

Passenger installed -

Used the videos from TacoTunes for the door panels with one caveat pointed out by [MENTION=83083]rigtec[/MENTION]

I wish I'd seen this before I did the front doors. Most door panels are removed by pulling all the clips on the lower portion out then lifting up to raise the panel out of the door channel. The 5th gen 4R is not designed this way, although it can be done with patience and care. Instead what you should do is pull the top portion away the same as the bottom portion, i.e. toward your body not upward.

You can see in these photos the top piece has a second set of clips and it's much easier to separate the two pieces.

Front door panels/speakers -
TacoTunes video - Toyota 4Runner How to remove front door panels - YouTube

Installed -

Rear door panels/speakers -
TacoTunes video - Toyota 4Runner How to remove rear door panels - YouTube

Installed -

[/url]

I was concerned about the JBL system being 2Ω and the speakers being 4Ω, but they are very clear and very loud. The only noise I hear now is when I play older compressed MP3s, tracks with low compression are crystal clear. I was also very surprised by the increase in bass response.

 

[gaterose]

Im so confused i have a 2019 TRD PRO 4RUNNER WITH THE JBL STEREO, and I read a few places it says I need capacitors for the tweeters is there a reason you didn't use that?


Thank you in advance for your help...

I had not read that, I read that there was already a capacitor in there for the JBL system since it had 3.5s in that so I didn't think it was necessary. It sounds GREAT so :shrug:

 

[4RLTD16]

I cannot tell you how excited I was to stumble across this write up after sifting through far too many non-JBL upgrades. I used your method to wire a new pair of 3.5" Infinity Reference 3032cfx tweeters in the dash and it work perfectly.

Question: On my 2016 4R Limited there was a cap inline on one of the wires, the green wire to be specific. Did you have this cap and did you leave in place when you reused the wiring for your new speaker connection?

 

[gaterose]

I cannot tell you how excited I was to stumble across this write up after sifting through far too many non-JBL upgrades. I used your method to wire a new pair of 3.5" Infinity Reference 3032cfx tweeters in the dash and it work perfectly.

Question: On my 2016 4R Limited there was a cap inline on one of the wires, the green wire to be specific. Did you have this cap and did you leave in place when you reused the wiring for your new speaker connection?

It's been a while but I believe I did have those and removed them. That way the full range could go to the 3.5 and the 3.5's built-in cap could limit what goes to the tweeter.

 

[BIGpharma]

One of my wife's dash speakers went out recently and this gave me an opportunity to upgrade my Tacoma to a Morel 3-way component setup which then freed up the Kickers I had been using to upgrade the stock JBL door & dash speakers. May upgrade the HU, sub, and hatch speakers later, but this is a tremendous improvement for now and solved the blown speaker problem and my justifying an upgrade to 3-way components in the taco problem..

Thank you so much for this! Finally replaced my blown dash speakers after 6 months of putting it off and they sound great! The passenger side was a pita in my car for whatever reason, The speaker was too large for the space but i managed to finally get it after turning the bracket and pushing down real hard.

 

[Mem4runner]

I went with these speakers because it made more sense to me than a component set. Since the crossover is built into the HU, it is only sending higher freqs to the dash location and lower freqs to the door. The stock setup is a 2-3/4 2-way in the dash and a woofer in the door. This is a 3-3/4 2-way in the dash and a woofer (with non-functional tweeters since the HU isn't sending HF to the front door) in the door. Spending extra money just to eliminate the tweeters didn't make sense to me.

A component set with the stock JBL HU would require intricate wiring and signal reintegration or relying on the integral JBL crossover and throwing out the aftermarket crossover and most important part of a component set (also the piece that makes component sets so expensive).

If we ever swap the HU, I'll prob go with a 3-way component setup like I have in the Taco.

I purchase a set of 6x9 convertible component speakers and a set of 3.5” 2-way for the dash. Through this thread I’ve realized that the front doors get low pass signal only and dash gets high pass signal only.

Wondering if I could skip the crossover that came with the 6x9 and piggyback that door tweeter off the signal going to the dash?

 

[Mem4runner]

Update on my 2017 Limited w/ JBL:

Front doors: Memphis Audio MS69 convertible component speakers. Removed the tweeters completely and didn’t not use the provided crossover. Wired driver directly to the factory wiring. I used the Amazon version of dynamat to soundproof the doors (worked great and was super easy). I also used the Metra speaker brackets and road kill foam rings to direct the sound out. I cut the factory wiring harness and soldered the connections then used heat shrink.

Rear doors: Memphis Audio MS62 convertible component speakers with same soundproofing/bracket brands as front speakers. Tweeters installed in the center mount. The crossover for these speakers were perfect as they have their own mounting bracket on the back of the speaker. Cut the factory harness and soldered speaker connections directly with heat shrink.

Dash: This is where things got interesting. At first, I built a bracket to mount the tweeters provided with the 6x9 front door speakers. I unclipped the factory harness and unbolted the factory speaker (2 wires that turn into 4. 2 of the 4 were wired to the “mid” driver on the little factory 2-way dash speaker and the other had a capacitor for low-pass function and went to the “tweeter” portion.) I used heatshrink to insulate the 2 wires for the “mid” driver and wired the 2 wires with the capacitor to the new tweeter provided with the 6x9 and reinstalled.

EDITED DASH: after listening to the system at this point I noticed that the tweeters in the dash were not powerful enough to overcome the awkward direction they were pointed so the sound profile was too far back toward the rear of the car. Also, I was missing out significantly on the mid-range compared to the stock 2-way dash speakers. The next day I picked up a set of Kicker KS 3.5” speakers. Removed the heatshrink on the “mid-range” wires coming out of the harness and reconnected those to the new speakers, then heat shrank the other 2 wires that had the capacitor since the new speakers had capacitor built-in for the tweeter, and therefore no low-pass filter was necessary. This was a MASSIVE improvement over the Memphis tweeter and stock dash speaker. The mounts for the factory speakers were cut to retrofit the bigger 3.5” speaker as shown earlier in this thread. The driver side went in super smooth, however the passenger side was a little more difficult fit due to AC vent and less depth available. The back of the factory speaker screens were trimmed with a oscillating dremel tool.

Rear hatch door: removed these speakers completely for the time being (until budget allows for another set of MS62).

Subwoofer: installed a Memphis audio MB series 8” subwoofer in the factory box and mounted a cheap skar audio 350watt RMS amp under the passenger seat to power it. This was the hardest part of the install with having to remove 3rd row seats and the entire rear panel. Lots of great videos on this process on YouTube.

I’ve also got a T-10 Chinese android head unit (plug and play) from cartrim that is AMAZING. There was definitely some fiddling and research to get the CarPlay and other features set up (CTH 4Runner Android Head Unit Owners group on FB was a HUGE HELP).

 

[Mem4runner]

The sound is night and day compared to factory. Crystal clear and LOUD. I did notice the volume needing to be higher compared to factory since I went from 2ohm speakers to 4ohm with the factory amp, but it’s still plenty loud and will make your ears ring if you want it to. Very happy with the results. Everything including the head unit I’m about $1200-1400 in. Headunit was done first, subwoofer/amp was done second and the door speakers were done in a 3rd round of upgrades