Amazed at how cheap the factory speakers are

I have owned my Tacoma for about 1 year now and last week, I noticed one of the factory front door speakers was sounding very distorted. I replaced both front door speakers yesterday and I was a bit shocked when I took the factory speakers out. I am 51 and I have replaced a lot of speakers over the years. I have never seen such cheap pathetic factory speakers in any vehicle. The entire speaker frame is plastic and I have never seen a speaker magnet that small. Toyota did the absolute bare minimum to create a speaker that just makes sound. They should be embarrassed for putting that in their vehicles. After seeing how bad the front speakers are, I will be replacing the rear door speakers soon too.

 

don't bother. the rear speaker location sucks acoustically, there's no improvement, even with changing the head unit, the speakers, and a healthy dose of 31-band eq.

also, i don't know what you're using for a comparison, but this looks very nearly the same other than the plastic frame in terms of cheap build quality...

 

What size and model recommendation please?

 

If you ask for speaker recommendations, you will get people recommending many many different speakers. I was just looking for an improvement over the factory speakers, I am not looking for super high end studio quality speakers. I stopped at my local Best Buy store and they had some Pioneer 6x9 speakers for $45. They sound fantastic too. The rear doors take 6.5" speakers and the matching Pioneers in 6.5" are $35.

 

I replaced the 6x9 speakers with Pioneers and the matching 6.5" speakers are only $35, so I figured I may as well replace the rears too. The new 6x9 speakers sound fantastic.

 

Thank you. Does Best Buy still install? I’ll look it up. Thanks again

 

The OP is right, the factory speaker does not look like the usual cheap oem speaker. It has a magnet and voice coil 1/3rd the size. I just saw one while procuring a replacement for my daughter’s Tacoma front door speaker. Looked like this:

 

I know that Best Buy used to have a car audio install shop, but I don't know if they still do. If there is a Best Buy near you, you could stop by and check. I installed the Pioneer TS-G690 6x9 speakers. Here is a link. https://www.bestbuy.com/site/pioneer-6-x-9-3-way-coaxial-speakers-pair-black/6065204.p?skuId=6065204

 

Yep, that is exactly what I pulled out of my Tacoma. They are pretty sad speakers. I installed the Pioneer TS-G690 speakers and they sound great. And they were only $45. You do have to use speaker adapters and wire harness adapters to install them. They are needed with any aftermarket speakers.

 

FWIW, definitely not defending Toyota, but the teeny-tiny magnets could be ceramic or neodymium. Size would be dictated by design requirements and they could/would be smaller. In order to judge a speaker you need to view the freq response range and wattage handling capabilities w/o distortion.

After a bit of thought, another way to judge speakers is how they sound, the method the OP used. If they sound like dung, they're bad speakers!!!!!!!!!

Definitely would love some Pioneer speakers in my AC, those look spectacular...

 

For the rears I would put something with a lower resistance in. The speakers from factory are 4ohm on the dot, but compared to other 4ohms out there they are very vibrant and loud. I put some 3ohm speakers in and it did not distort the sound at all. The head unit is really good quality, pretty good sound output. Even the JBLs have smaller rare earth metal magnets. They are stronger than the normal ferrite magnets so the size is much smaller.

 

That speaker is part Toyota’s Side Impact Safety SYstem. (SISSY) It is designed to protect the front seat passenger from -both- crash impact (by crumpling like a tin can) and hearing damage (by burning out the coil if played too loud.) Replacing the speakers will void your warranty, and your truck should immediately be parted out, for liability reasons.

PS to the Toyota Bean Counters: You could have saved a few more pennies by going to a 3-bolt mounting layout and eliminating the coil support rib at the 9 o’clock position. Shameful fail - throw yourselves off the nearest office chair.

 

The main reason that I changed them is because the passenger side speaker seemed to be blown. It was distorting very bad. I turned the fade and balance all the way forward and to the right and with the volume turned up , you could barely hear sound coming out of the speaker. Every now and then, it would make the horrible distorted sound. But after I had both speaker replaced, I found that the sound quality was greatly improved.

 

Audio plus

 

Thanks for reminding me how poop the speakers are. I’ve gotten so used to maxing it out just to hear. I will be now looking for more things to throw money at

 

At least you don't have the forsaken "JBL system" I got pigeonholed into. I prob 400 bucks on a real JBL system in my old rig, this sounds nothing like it.
The electronics.....dear god it reminds me of my old e34 which was a nightmare to rewire bc the factory amp and processor.

 

only of you want to make the mistake of keeping any of the factory gear. there's nothing requiring the gear to stay installed.

 

One day.....one day my friend. For now other things first.

 

I work in car rentals and get into a bunch of different brands of vehicles at work. Toyotas are by far the worst when it comes to speakers. Hell, even the shitty JBL system in my trd off road premium sounds worse than some non-upgrade sound systems in these rental cars, specifically Mazda. I think Mazda made it a point to figure out the best speaker placements within the cabin to make every thing sound better even without their upgraded bise system. Toyota is going the way of 90s and early 2000s GM: bean counters fucking things up.

 

My friend who owns a high-quality stereo shop in town does some serious high-end work. He installed a Rockford Sub and amp combo that fits perfectly behind the rear pass side seat and looks as if it was factory, then replaced the dash speakers with some Rockford 2 way speaker/tweeter combo and added a 400 watt amp to the head unit. The sound was absolutely awesome and was quite impressed with the factory door speakers once some power was put to through them. He suggested once I get bored and thought I was ready for a little better quality sound to get a new set of speakers and the rear door speakers to match the size of the fronts. Both of us agreed the factory speakers sounded great but he did something to the rear door speakers to give it some more volume. For close to $1k I'm satisfied.