Guide: Subaru Tweeter Upgrade For 2nd Gen Tacos, NO SPLICING, CUTTING, OR SOLDERING REQUIRED

Reviving an old thread to say just did this tweeter swap this afternoon and the difference over stock is absolutely insane. I used to think the stock head unit was garbage (well, it's not great) but now it is definitely LOUD. Feels like the bass kicks more too. Great upgrade.

 

Have you also upgraded the door speakers? or did you just upgrade the tweeters? Thanks.

 

Just the tweeters, though once I had the door panels off I was kicking myself for not doing them all at once. However just the tweeters alone make an insane difference. Can't believe I wasted 7 years with the stockers.

 

So what pink and purple or green and blue is the positive and negative coming from the deck? At this point it would probably be simpler just to pull wire and skip all the factory stuff. I just need the two to run from the deck to the cross over then from there I’ll run new wiring to the mid driver and the tweeter

 

Hey black_cat thank you for the info can you give me the model # of the kicker tweeters you used

 

Just upgraded the tweeters and lower speakers and feelin good about it.
Thanks for the breakdown!

 

Just did this install today; thanks for the great tutorial!

 

Will this method work with the factory Headunit?

 

Just ordered my tweeters! Thanks for the write up!

 

Old thread but I just did this today and got away with a lot less harness tweaking.

I cut the stock tweeter red and black wires right at the source. Installed kicker is above:



The only connection I needed to do is pos/neg for each tweeter. The rest of the factory harness was kept. (Factory harness, male and female seen right below the crimped connections I made.



The reason you only need one connector each for pos/neg is that the four pins on the Subaru Kicker are actually two sets each with two prongs joined. That one little connector for pos/neg for each side is all that it takes. This image is a crappy drawing of the side view of the Subaru tweet staring down at the built in connector harness. I might not have drawn this totally accurately.



If I had to do it again I would just buy a stock adapter harness and not get the Subaru Kicker for the 2015 Tacoma since it’s extra work and limits the selection of what you are putting in. But kickers installed in the other doors and its all sounding great compared to stock!

 

I don’t get it… what did you do? I have the tweeters waiting for install.

 

- I cut the single black and red wire that is soldered to each factory tweeter (first photo)

- I crimp a connector on the end of the black & red wires I cut off the factory tweeter (the red and blue connectors with gold tips in second photo).

- I put a red and blue connector I crimped on into the input of (each) Subaru Kicker as shown in that silly little drawing I tried to do (final image in my post).

That’s all I got, first time ever posting a car wiring thing on the internets so a lot of room to grow.

 

What are good speakers for the lower doors to complement these Subie tweeters? Seems like you'd want just woofers or perhaps 2 ways with midrange down there rather than something with another tweeter. What are people using?

 

I'm wondering the same thing. My left door lower speaker just died and I'm looking for a replacement and I might install the Kicker/Subaru speakers while I'm in there.

 

So, from this photo is looks like the OEM tweeter has a wire pigtail attached to a female connector so that the female connector is NOT integrated onto the tweeter body like the new Subie ones. Is that correct? If that is the case it seems like you could cut the female connector off the old OEM tweeter, then cut open the connector housing on the new Subie tweeter and solder on the wires from the OEM pigtail onto those pins. Then just plug in the factory male plug. I'd prefer to do that instead of messing with the male plug like the OP did. Has anyone here tried that?

One more question, what size are these tweeters? Seems like getting a different set like maybe some Pioneers and a pair of mounting adapters would be cheaper and easier to do on these 2nd gens than the Subies. Not sure about the sound quality, however.

$33 Pioneer TS-T110 7/8" Hard-Dome Tweeter (Pair)

Amazon.com: Pioneer TS-T110 7/8-Inch Hard-Dome Tweeter (Pair) : Electronics

 

That's sort of what I did but a LOT less cutting and hacking. I cut the two wires off the Toyota factory tweet (all other Toyota OEM connector/harness stuff remained), crimped on two new connectors and attached those two connectors to the harness built into the Subaru Tweet. I didn't have to cut or hack any Toyota Harnesses or the Subaru Tweet. You only need two wires to go to the Subaru Tweet. The connector harness built into the Subaru tweeter has 4 prongs but they are joined together as two sets of two so you only need one connector to go to each pair. (As my crappy drawing tries to show.) I gotta do a better drawing!

 

But from the photos I have seen the Subaru tweet doesn't have a harness or pigtail. The connector seems to be integral to the unit. Are the internal wires still accessible somehow?

 

Here is what I did.

If you look straight into the built-in harness on the Subaru tweet you can see 4 pins. Picture below. Note that if you stare in there real close you will see that the left two pins are connected to each other as are the right two pins



You can see where I made the yellow circles on this image. If you crimp on the smallest auto connector (2.8mm) to the wires cut from the original Toyota tweeter you can attach the connectors to two of these pins and you are good to go. No harness cutting, harness carving, etc.

But that begs the question why bother with the Subaru Tweeter? If you cut the red/black wires at the Toyota tweeter and crimped some connectors you could hook up any tweeter.

If you are Gen 3 Tacoma, it’s plug and play. Especially if that is all you are going to do, just upgrade the tweeter, keeping the OEM 6x9. Then you don’t have to buy mounting harness to hold the tweet or speaker harnesses to attach to the oem male speaker connector.



If you are Gen 2 or are are also thinking about upgrading the 6x9’s , getting the Subaru tweet is not so obvious a choice. You start getting into these time consuming harness mods (maybe, or do what I did). You need to decide whether you should be doing a dedicated 6x9 woofer with crossover and tweeter setup instead of a full range in the 6x9 spot and the tweeter up top.

 

The electrical part of the install is one thing, but there is also the physical install. Seems like these Subaru pieces drop right in and fit like stock whereas some of the others are various diameters and physical size and so might not just drop in... and you would need adapter brackets and such. Not rocket science but details to be figured out. It would be nice to just be able to disassemble the door and do this job in one go. I have never had my door panel off to suss this all out so the Subie part just dropping in physically would be a benefit.

I like your approach for the electrical, but I might take it just a tad further as I noted above and solder the leads from the cut off OEM tweet harness onto the pins of the Subie Tweet instead of crimp-ons. Or maybe even onto the exposed parts of the red and black wires. They look pretty accessible in your photos. I don't want to ever have to take the door apart again.


QUOTE="Scoopster66, post: 27529253, member: 400610"]
If you are Gen 2 or are are also thinking about upgrading the 6x9’s , getting the Subaru tweet is not so obvious a choice. [/QUOTE]

 

Here is another option if you want a Kicker system: Kicker 48KSS269 component install in 2007 | Tacoma World

Pretty straight forward and fit perfect.