Improving Stereo In A Defender - Part 2 - My Solution

**sam_d** · 26th March 2014, 10:14 PM

After looking at the solutions other people have come up with in my previous thread I found that none of them were really suitable for the my situation so I went back to the thinking about the situation and decided on a different approach.

Instead of increasing the volume produced in speakers around the car I decided to use some smaller speakers positioned closer to my ears. Defenders are already noisy enough.

This solution might not suit everyone's situation (and isn't suitable for anyone with OCD) as you will see...

First of all I started looking for a small speaker set and found these Bluetooth speakers on sale at JB HiFi:

Since most of what I listen to when driving is from my Smart Phone this seemed like a good start. Using Bluetooth to connect to the speakers saves messing around with extra wire.

The next step was to make some brackets for the speakers to mount them to the head lining. I a few bits of fixing plate with some heatshrink tubing was the way I went:

A few cable ties to join the brackets and speakers together just seemed to be the most "Land Rover" way I could think of doing this. I didn't want to screw the brackets to the speaker as I didn't know how close to the casing the critical parts are to the casing:

Cable ties trimmed and brackets bent into final shape (the roof isn't as uniformally flat as I'd first thought):

This is where those OCD people may want to look away. Because I wanted the cables to feed into the speakers from the outside edge of the car, the speakers each have to be a different way from each other. It doesn't have to be like this but I did it to minimise the amount messing around with wires. Also, this means that one side will have it's stereo sounds coming out the wrong way round (Ignore the wires in these photos - they're there for testing purposes)

Driver's Side:

Passenger's Side:

And the view of the Driver's side from behind:

All that's left to do is put in a daisy chain cable that is a bit more discrete then the test cable I'm using and put in a USB power supply. After this I will be wiring up the feed that normally goes to the rear speakers to go to the speakers 3.5mm input so that I can also use the speakers with the radio if I so chose. I'll get on to this once I've got the necessary bits 'n' bobs from Jaycar.

I am not an audiophile by any means but I am really happy with the result of the sound quality and simplicity of this set up.

**mools** · 26th March 2014, 11:22 PM

Cool. I like your style, not to everyone's taste for sure but go your own way and all that. Love the use of cable ties, fixing plate and heat shrink is just genius. I'd always thought about mounting PC speakers to the cargo barrier rather than replacing the inadequate factory speakers but this is genius. So I'm intrigued. I have a couple of questions:

1. Where is part 1?

2. Did you just screw the mounts to the headlining i.e. self tapping type screws straight in or did you put something more robust behind the headliner?

Looking forward to the update with wireing route.

Also, in the last pic it looks like you have a pretty serious radio set up in a centre console there too. How / where did you route the power to those?

Cheers and thanks for the post.

Ian.

**sam_d** · 27th March 2014, 08:08 AM

Originally Posted by mools

Cool. I like your style, not to everyone's taste for sure but go your own way and all that. Love the use of cable ties, fixing plate and heat shrink is just genius. I'd always thought about mounting PC speakers to the cargo barrier rather than replacing the inadequate factory speakers but this is genius. So I'm intrigued. I have a couple of questions:

1. Where is part 1?

2. Did you just screw the mounts to the headlining i.e. self tapping type screws straight in or did you put something more robust behind the headliner?

Looking forward to the update with wireing route.

Also, in the last pic it looks like you have a pretty serious radio set up in a centre console there too. How / where did you route the power to those?

Cheers and thanks for the post.

Ian.

1) Part 1 is here: Improving stereo sound in a Defender

2) I used 8G x 15mm timber screws directly in to the roof lining. I thought I might have to put some kind of backing in place but they've gone in really quite well without needing one. Time will tell if they are likely to come loose I suppose.

In the final pic you can see the 477MHz and 27MHz radios. They were all built in with the console before I took ownership of the car and I don't know/where the power supply comes from for them.

I used to have a set of 6x9s mounted on the cargo barrier wired in using the feed to the rear factory speakers in my Disco but that option wasn't viable with my defender.

**numpty** · 27th March 2014, 09:21 AM

Certainly different, but good that it works for you.

Re power cable to overhead console. It is usually fed up the A pillar and across the roof to the original interior light hole. At least, that is where I fed mine.

**Rurover** · 27th March 2014, 09:49 AM

Originally Posted by mools

2. Did you just screw the mounts to the headlining i.e. self tapping type screws straight in or did you put something more robust behind the headliner?

Ian.

Ian,

I mounted an extra light in the headliner of my old Td5 and used the white plastic screw-in "plugs" that you can buy for screwing things to gyprock walls.
They give a very solid result and will not pull out of the headliner.

Alan

schuy1 · 27th March 2014, 02:23 PM

A solution is a solution! If it works..... even if it is umm, whats the word?.............. eerr, agricultural?

But then thats a Defender, practical, useful, agricultural!

Cheers Scott

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