BLACKSPL6.1 6.5" Inch 17cm 4Ohm
Coaxial 2 Way Speaker Pair 370w RMS
Instruction manual
Thank you for choosing Bassface. From the simplest connector to our top of the range
amplifier - every element of these products has been designed to give you the best possible
performance for your money. Please take the time to read these instructions carefully as
they contain useful and important information. Modern high power audio systems can
generate voltages at the speaker similar to mains operated equipment – for some reason
everyone seems to ignore or forget this. Your wiring needs to be good to be safe. Please
remember this and take your time. Please exercise caution when setting volume levels –
powerful audio equipment can easily produce enough sound to permanently damage
hearing. Remember that audio competitors use ear protection when operating and
competing. Do remember that incorrect installation or abuse is not covered under warranty
– please make sure that your installation and any partnered product is suitable and
compatible. If you are unsure please seek qualified advice before proceeding. Always use
appropriate hand and eye protection when working with tools, and always work within your
capabilties as an installer. We offer a 12 month manufacturer warranty via your distributor
or retailer. Please retain your purchase receipt as proof of purchase. Please note that
Bassface operates a policy of continuous product development and we reserve the right to
change specification without prior notice. You can follow our process on our website by
reviewing the version history information.
Please note that we sometimes include information inside these manuals which we feel is of
potential value to the client on related subjects such as conversion charts, capacitance
values or wiring diagrams. Please feel free to copy any of this information since it is in the
public domain.
Successful installation of new car audio speakers is a task that relies on the engineer
understanding that the performance of the finished system is squarely in his or her hands
to even more of an extent that it is us, as the driver manufacturer.
For this manual I’m going to concentrate on actual training in terms of understanding the
topic, rather than stating the obvious in a “prepare the mounting hole, drill the holes, run in
a wire, screw in the speakers” kind of text.
In home audio, the customer purchases a complete speaker system – that is – a driver in a
properly designed enclosure that the manufacturer has tested. In car audio, marine audio
and “custom” audio our involvement and help can go as far as providing you with a great
RAW DRIVER and this manual and the rest is down to installation.
The first part to learn about is the “baffle plate” – the actual mounting plane you are going
to screw the speakers to. In a car, this is normally the inner metal door panel via a plastic
adaptor.
In an ideal world the baffle plate would be infinitely strong and free of any vibration
reaction to the speaker itself. A typical car door panel is of course nothing at all like this.
Installations where the speakers are mounted into wooden rings or into the floor panel or
kickwell area via custom solutions are normally at a terrific advantage to a typical door
installation from the very start.
Benefits to firming up the baffle plate are enormous – from deeper, richer bass to sweeter
midrange and high end performance there will be nothing that isn’t improved. In fact the
difference between a well installed driver and a badly installed on is absolutely, absolutely,
absolutely game changing and unrecognisable that the sound is produced by the same
physical product.
You can use fiberglass resin, bitumen or butyl based sound deadening, wooden structures
or even metal reinforcement panels to help stiffen things up.
Secondly, you should pay attention to the area that forms the effective “enclosure” around
the back of the speaker. If we remember my example earlier of the home hifi speaker unit
that would generally have a neat and thick wooden enclosure with carefully positioned
Dacron wool. We potentially have a tin car door with a glass window and a tonne of wire
and rattly mechanism to play with. To say we are at a disadvantage is understating it!
Our advice is to stay out of the doors as much as you can but I have to concede that so
many times you have no choice. So if you are faced with a door install the plan for the
backwave is to work hard to sound deaden the door card itself and the metal shell of the
door. Modern products are available that can even be sprayed into the door shell to achieve
this aim as well if not better than traditional soundproofing material. Finally, take care to
work out where any water ingress will affect the installation, and loop any cables at a low
point under the speaker so droplets form on the bottom of the cables and drip down into
the door drain. If you suspect that the speaker will be subject to water from above (apart
from waterproof speakers obviously) we recommend that a simple hood be made and
fastened above the driver to protect it as constant attack from the elements will eventually
damage the speaker. Also pay attention to the mounting depth of the speaker to make sure
that the window can pass behind it as it drops, if applicable.
If your speaker system is one of our component sets with a separate crossover then again,
please pay careful attention to mounting and keep the crossover out of the door if possible.
If this simply can’t be done due to wiring constraints then make sure the crossover box is
on the interior side of the door splash sheet. Mounting a crossover in the main cavity of the
door results in failure (in the UK anyway!) within a few months and our warranty guys won’t
be exactly thrilled to see your crossover sent back as “faulty” looking like a relic from the
SS Titanic deep sea research operation…
At this point I want to be realistic with you – if you have bought a set of bassface speakers
to replace your old but working existing speakers and you really don’t have the time to
follow the advice in this manual to improve your installation – ie you’re just going to replace
like with like – what might you expect from the sonic performance? Firstly – you won’t get
the most out of your speaker. I hope I’ve explained why already. Secondly you will get an
improvement in tonal performance – our speakers sound smooth and sweet and exciting at
the mid and top end. The bass response, however, like the ones you are replacing, will
probably be disappointing. If you are driving them off a standard head unit the power that
is available isn’t much and will distort easily – the speakers can’t do anything about this. As
a final point on straight replacements please be very careful that you install the new
speakers at least as well as the old ones otherwise you might actually end up with WORSE
sound than before you started! It is important not to replace a basic but well fitting OEM
speaker with a nice but badly fitting aftermarket one. And that doesn’t matter if it’s a
BassFace or anyone else’s brand – same rules apply. So make sure, at the absolute
minimum that there is no air leakage around the speaker, that the screws are not distorting
the chassis and that there is room for the cone to move forwards without hitting any oem
grille or door panel hardware. I have seen all these things and more and in every case poor
attention to detail on the part of the installer resulted in a sub standard result.
I’d like to make a point about the wiring of the speakers. It is preferable to rewire the
system with excellent quality OFC cable (obviously we recommend our own) but it is NOT a
critical factor for getting a good sound. Much more important is the careful physical
installation as I have detailed above.
Finally I want to introduce you to the concept of time alignment and stereo. This is a
complicated subject but an overview is that for the best stereo you should design your
speaker system to offer the most equal path lengths between the listener’s left ear and the
left speaker and the listener’s right ear and the right speaker. If you think about the design
of most cars, with either left or right hand drive and then speakers in their common
locations this is potentially a difficult brief.
Delving further, however, we can start to recognise that the lower down and further away
we can position the speakers (such as footwells or floor panels) the more equidistant the
two measurements become. The trade off when designing a no compromise install is that
the lower down the speakers are mounted (and this is especially true if you expect the
speakers to produce high frequencies such as tweeters) the more the sound stage suffers
at the edges.
A sound stage is an imaginary stage – like at a concert – in front of you in the car. If there is
a violin on the left of the stage how well is that replicated to listen to? Is the violin “there”
or is it on the passenger’s left foot? If the singer is centre stage is she coherent, together
and placeable? Or is she singing at you from everywhere like in a disco? Placing the higher
frequency speakers physically higher helps lift the “level” of the sound stage but can harm
the coherence of the sound – known as “imaging and staging”.
I hope the paragraphs above help to create some interest in working to optimise the setup
and design of your installations. It can be really helpful to have the tweeters (if applicable)
on a pair of fly lead extension cables and then you can blu-tak them to the car in various
positions pending test to help selection of the best location.
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