Is the Subaru tweeter mod worth the $100???

I am rather familiar with the placebo effect, having studied it in medical school. While something may be a “placebo”, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work!

Some people respond to even minor changes in sound positively, while others are “meh”. As always, YMMV, depends on your ears and your brain, etc.

I wouldn’t call it placebo effect, just confirmation bias. We see this a lot in the guitar world—“I changed out my crap OEM Epi pickups for Gibson Classic 57’s and now the sound is freakin’ awesome!” It should be if you spent $250 including tech time for the upgrade. Also in the automotive world of course.

It’s hard to be objective, but at the end of the day it’s your money and your perception of whether something is worth it or not. All the rest are just, like, our opinions, man.

 

Thank you for being specific!!

If I don't want to fight it and just want to set $1000 as my UPPER spending limit - I may just do that. I'm not on call Until Jan 6 so I'm going to shop a bit in person.

 

Definitely not a placebo. I replaced my tweeters and the next time my wife was in the truck she said “did you get a new stereo, sounds great!”.

 

Same thing happened with my wife and kids. I purposely did not say anything about upgrading the tweeters due to a steady list of mods I’ve been doing to my Tacoma and the night after installing the Kickers they asked if I upgraded my speakers. No placebo effect there but I understand the rationale. I’m just speaking from my experience and these $100 plug and play tweeters made a big difference for me but I also care a lot about playing music loud (XM and Bluetooth). I didn’t find the stock system to be worse than any other car I’ve owned, multiple Toyota’s and Jeeps, so in my opinion the mod is certainly not a “must have” but it was cheap, easy and a nice surprise in improved quality.

 

I did the kicker tweeter and speaker upgrade on my 2018 a year ago. When I installed mine I changed everything on one side so I could use the balance to hear the difference from factory speakers to aftermarket kicker speakers and tweeters. I noticed a loss of volume and bass from the new kicker speakers because the head unit didn’t produce enough power to produce the bass and volume I was looking for. I did a little research and ordered a five channel amp from Taco-tunes along with a 10”infinity sub which I built a sealed in closure for. The sub is a shallow mount and only requiring half a cubic foot of airspace in the enclosure. This fit behind the rear seat in my double cab. This made a huge difference in sound with 75 watts at all four door speakers and 350 watts to the subwoofer. They sell the wiring harness which is plug and play into the head unit. It takes less then 5 minutes to remove the head unit. What takes the longest is removing a few panels to run wiring. If you check out Taco-tunes web site they have a bunch of videos showing how to do the work and tune the amp when your done. It’s been a year now and I still love the way the system cranks. Can’t believe the amount of bass this system puts out. Couldn’t be happier. I have read mixed reviews about Taco-tunes service but I have had good luck with my order. Everything came in in less then two weeks. Check out their products and videos if your looking to upgrade your system.

 

Having received these for Christmas and just now installing them, I will say that they do sound very slightly better and music is a bit sharper/clearer however after inspecting both speakers I think the overall construction goes to Toyota. I dont build speakers so I don't know what goes into it but Toyota uses an all aluminum construction while Subraru uses plastic. While there was a slight improvement in sound quality I do not think it's worth the $100 personally. I'll keep my OEM speakers for now and may even swap them back in and sell the Subaru ones, time will tell.

 

I have the same subwoofer, but with a JBL badge on it

 

I had the same feeling after installing mine. Hilarious how everyone acts like this is the best $100 mod out there. Very minimal improvement to sound. Many better things to put that money towards.

 

Appreciate your insight. I guess everyone has different ear sensitivity. I personally saw a big improvement not the little bit you talk about. From really shitty to concert hall quality?... get real no tweeter replacement is going to give you this. Just a bit of clarity and more range. I saw that and for me is worth the $100. Other apparently not so much. And that's okay. Buy you and your wife (or SO) a nice steak dinner. Of course we know where all that ends up... LOL

 

Its sounds better for sure. Theres not a lot of 100 dollar upgrades that are this easy to install so I'd say yea it's worth

 

Really? I thought $100 for two speakers was a pretty good bang for your buck. I'm in Canada though so everything up here is more expensive including decent speakers.

 

$80

bam wholesale parts . Com

 

I did the Subaru tweeter upgrade on my last Tacoma the sound was ok . But for 100 bucks it really was not worth it didn't see that much improvement over stock .I ended up pulling the door speakers to the kicker cs speakers that actually were louder than the Subaru tweeters . So basically it was a waste of money . There is other brands out there that sound better . but sound is subjective its different for everyone .well hope that helps good luck ,

 

Just did it on mine. When installing I put one in, listened to a number of songs and found the difference from the stock to be very noticeable when side by side.

 

Just did these in mine too. Worth it for only $100 and ease of install. I also just ordered a sub enclosure from Marv.

 

Amazing upgrade instead of $100 for tweeters is the under seat kicker sub.

$300 Kicker Hideaway Powered Enclosure HS8 - Used Acceptable

https://www.amazon.com/Kicker-11HS8...KER+11HS8&qid=1577633609&s=electronics&sr=1-2
I put one of these in and it vibrates the rear view mirror.
Best audio mod I did. Yes you could build sub boxes and all that to put in but this was quick and good enough imo. Love it. Been going strong for over 2 years now.

 

Two completely different mods, people are looking for more sound quality not distortion. Adding a sub and not addressing the poop OEM sound quality is not what this thread is about.

 

Read a few posts up, there are many other posts similar other than tweet comments. Sound is sound, 20Hz or 20Khz.

 

And they too are not what this thread is about. It’s simple to add bass to any car/truck. This is a specific thread about using Subaru tweeters in a Tacoma.

 

And adding tweeters is difficult ? Seriously ?