Wood speaker rings common?

[CapWKidd 10+ year member]

Is it common practice to install wood rings to install larger speakers in factory locations, ie, install a 6.5" where a factory 5 1/4 was located (the ring being behind the door panel)? I ask because I just had some speakers installed, the installer said he could not fit the speakers behing the factory grill, and he had to cut/sacrafice the facotry speaker to mount the after martket speaker... so he somehow used the rim of the factory speaker to mount the after market speaker.... I can hardly imagine how this must look behind the panel, but does this sound like a hack job, or what? Reguardless of what was in the door before, isn't the normal practice to take out the factory speaker, put a wood ring on the sheet metal, attach the bigger speaker to the wood ring.... or is this not correct? Opinions please....

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[mokedaddy 5,000+ posts]

That is what you can expect from most install shops. The motto is usually 'make it work' and with that comes the least amount of effort to make sure it is mounted.

I personally would have done it myself and used wood rings.

 

[Twilight 10+ year member]

Ouch. I know wood rings can be a daunting task for someone who doesn't have the tools to do it. But on ebay you can even get some plastic ones for like $6 shipped that aren't too bad.

You'd think a good audio shop would have stuff like this on hand though, eh?

 

[bass_lover1 10+ year member]

I wont install speakers without some type of spacer/baffle.

The metal to metal contact of mounting the driver directly to the door can cause a lot of unwanted noises and resonances, adding the MDF spacer helps reduce this drastically, or atleast it has in my experience.

 

[Flipx99 5,000+ posts]

I used a grinder, a jigsaw, several pieces of mdf to fit 8s in my doors.

The new, hip thing is to build your baffle out of cutting board.

 

[///M5 10+ year member]

It is a 100% pre-requisite IMO for doing any install. If you don't use a baffle your system will sound like shit.