GOLFMK8
GOLFMK7
GOLFMK6
GOLFMKV

Base mk7.5 system with JL C1 650 and JBL GTO 629

w124_karl

Ready to race!
Location
NC
The a-pillars, and especially those two stage clips, can kiss my a**.

Everything is wired up and working, but man getting the a-pillar trims in there correctly has totally eluded me. Back to YouTube.
 

GTIfan99

Autocross Champion
Location
FL
The a-pillars, and especially those two stage clips, can kiss my a**.

Everything is wired up and working, but man getting the a-pillar trims in there correctly has totally eluded me. Back to YouTube.
It's actually easy.

Remove the clips from the a pillar. Use pliers to squeeze the tip and pull trough the metal slit. Install back in the trim piece.

Wiggle the bottom of the trim into place. Takes a little patience, just rock it forward and back, until you get it in place, then push the upper clips into place.
 

w124_karl

Ready to race!
Location
NC
Weirdly, the passenger side went right in. The driver side put up a fight where it has to line up against the little tiny window. Ended up having to do the entire R&R process on that side a second time, and one of those safety clips is pretty sorry looking now, but it holds. For removal, a long pick with a 90 degree end on it was just the thing for sliding the clips out of the trim.

My hot glue work also came undone on the crossover while I was wrestling it into position, and rather than taking the wiring apart, I taped it down with some Gorilla Tape. It's not going anywhere. The rest of the extra wiring is all held down by a lot of this particular Tesa tape. I should have taken a picture of that, I was kind of proud of how clean it was. No rattles yet.

If anything comes apart or stops working inside those a-pillars, I am trading the car in. :LOL:

One thing that I noticed while putting it all together - the wiring harness adapters I used for the door speakers were backwards. For example, the (+) red/yellow wire from the car ended up going to the (-) terminal on the speaker, because the spade connectors are sized differently. I reversed the wiring on the tweeters to match. So brown --> red, red --> black.

Here's the important part though. The sound improvement is really, really incredible for the money. @GTIfan99 you're absolutely right. The bass hits harder, it's more crisp, and the highs are easier to distinguish without sounding tinny and piercing. I really like them a lot - wow am I glad you posted this thread.

The B&O setup in my wife's Q5 is still more impressive, but I wasn't expecting to match that with a $150-ish upgrade. This is exactly what I wanted, and I really appreciate your having posted the review and the moral support. 🎉
 

GTIfan99

Autocross Champion
Location
FL
I'm glad you like them.
 

boston_chris

New member
Location
Boston
Car(s)
2018 GTI
How do ya'll think the car would sound if I only upgraded the front woofers, maybe the rears as well? The tweeters sound decent to me already and seem to be a difficult replacement, so I'm not sure if the effort would be worth it.

My car currently has the base audio with added Helix Subwoofer kit. The sub frankly has horrible tuning, but the Helix amp is a really nice upgrade for driving the woofers and tweeters.
 

GTIfan99

Autocross Champion
Location
FL
How do ya'll think the car would sound if I only upgraded the front woofers, maybe the rears as well? The tweeters sound decent to me already and seem to be a difficult replacement, so I'm not sure if the effort would be worth it.

My car currently has the base audio with added Helix Subwoofer kit. The sub frankly has horrible tuning, but the Helix amp is a really nice upgrade for driving the woofers and tweeters.

I did the front woofers and tweeters on different days. I initially thought the stock tweeter didn't sound too bad, until I installed the JL tweeter. It's so much better. Just do it right.

The front tweeters are one of those jobs that if you did it a second time, it would be much easier and go fast.

Just make sure you have a set of long tipped pliers with a little bend at the tip, you pull up in the plane of the A pillar. To reinstall, it's easiest to get the upper clip out of the A pillar and you'll need to reshape it a little bit back to what it should look like after removal. Then you just insert it into the trim piece, wiggle the bottom into place (it doesn't just slide in, it requires some back and forth action and a trim tool maybe to push everything back into place), then push to get all the clips back in. Give some gentle taps with your palm all the way up and down and you're set. It isn't hard.

Just have the pliers, a trim tool, wire cutters, connectors, crimping tool and a glue gun.

In hindsight, drilling the damn rivets out of the door woofers was a bigger pain and involved me bleeding.
 
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GTIfan99

Autocross Champion
Location
FL
How do ya'll think the car would sound if I only upgraded the front woofers, maybe the rears as well? The tweeters sound decent to me already and seem to be a difficult replacement, so I'm not sure if the effort would be worth it.

My car currently has the base audio with added Helix Subwoofer kit. The sub frankly has horrible tuning, but the Helix amp is a really nice upgrade for driving the woofers and tweeters.

Did you end up doing the speaker upgrade?
 

El_bigote_AJ

Autocross Champion
Location
Las Vegas
Car(s)
2019 GTI bunny
I think I might try these out in the front doors if the new Tiguan, pretty sure they are the same ones that were in the GTI OEM, but they suck and the tweeter location being in the door makes it would like I’m holding a tiny desktop speaker to my head
 

GTIfan99

Autocross Champion
Location
FL
I think I might try these out in the front doors if the new Tiguan, pretty sure they are the same ones that were in the GTI OEM, but they suck and the tweeter location being in the door makes it would like I’m holding a tiny desktop speaker to my head

Did you do the Tiggy?
 

El_bigote_AJ

Autocross Champion
Location
Las Vegas
Car(s)
2019 GTI bunny
Did you do the Tiggy?
No traction on it yet, dealing with some cutting of audio randomly on select speakers of the GTI so I’ve been messing with tracing it to see if it’s the wiring, one of the many RCAs or amps/Dsp/converter. That’s annoying enough so I’ve not even thought of the audio on the Tiguan.
 

boston_chris

New member
Location
Boston
Car(s)
2018 GTI
Just got around to starting this, so far I've done the front passenger side with speakers and soundskins. TBD with some more critical listening but I'd rank the different upgrades as follows:

Tweeter replacement >> soundskins > helix = door woofer. All worth doing though.

The tweeter replacement is a PITA, and it's sketchy to be working around the airbags, but it's a relief to see that the horrible highs were from the tweeter itself and not the amp. The new woofers went in easy and have less boomy lows and fuller mids.

I was able to get the Jl crossover device to fit in the a pillar by just gluing it directly onto the speaker. Might be cleaner to splice it in to the wires in the dashboard though, since you end up removing that side trim anyways. Also I ripped out the old tweeter's wire harness and soldered it to the new one.

Shoutout GTIFan for the guide and extremely tasteful upgrade. I feel like the next thing would be an equalizer, maybe power it off the helix power-supply in the rear.
 
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GTIfan99

Autocross Champion
Location
FL
Yeah, the factory tweeters are garbage and you don't realize it until you replace them.
 

Cuzoe

Autocross Champion
Location
Los Angeles

boston_chris

New member
Location
Boston
Car(s)
2018 GTI
I remember reading somewhere that the helix wiring harness might not be connected to enough power for a real amp. Maybe a smaller amp can get away with it though?

And yeah, I'm not convinced the helix sub is adding much to the mix other than indistinct booming noises lol. My recollection is that the helix amp did help clean up the audio a lot though.
 

Cuzoe

Autocross Champion
Location
Los Angeles
Oh, I ran my own amp/sub with the Helix so I already had power back there. I just split it off with a distro block for my AudioControl DSP/Amp.

The helix has a fuse (fuses) on it right? I guess as long as any replacement amp has the same total amperage you can use that same power. If you're not replacing the speakers (or replacing them with something of equal/greater sensitivity) you don't need much power.
 
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