Focal ISS165 Wiring Help

Hey guys, just finally puchased a kit to upgrade my sound in my 2009 base Regular Cab. I have Pioneer AHV-3200BT HU already installed.

I ordered the Focal ISS165 as they were $130 on crutch and pretty much said they were $130 in savings. Anyway, the kit comes with a harness adapeter for the factory wiring harness. But it also comes with separate wiries for what I beleive to be the crossover. Although the factoy harness does not have a crossover wiried into it.

I think I have woried the tweeters correctly, I used their wired crossover soldered to the factory wires, red to red, black to black. I tried the other way around first and sound was not great. Much better with colors matching.

but I'm not sure that I'm getting full potential out of the woofers. Here is a picture from their website showing the wires inculded in the kit. They tell you to wire the tweeter and the woofer together.



Here is the harness


Crutch gives me a harness adapter that goes directly from the factory plug to the speakers (with wire connectors that fit the speaker) with no crossover. So I installed yesterday and left out the wire shown above (lower wire connected to woofer). The highs sound good, but there is really not much better sound of mids or lows compared to the factory speakers. Granted they are not broken in yet, which could argue would change anything at all. I also sound deadened the doors so I was expecting a lot better.

Attached is a diagram of what I have wired up.


Thanks for your help.

 

You have to keep in mind that you have not increased your power, so don’t expect a dramatic increase in sound quality.
Those focal’s like power, and they’re rated for 70w RMS.
The radio you have is giving them +/- 15w.

The highs sounding good is what you should expect. But for lows, they’ll need more power to sound their best.
The factory speaker is a tiny magnet, and a thin paper cone. This makes it very easy to move. The aftermarket speaker is a much thicker cone, a much bigger magnet, and a lot more weigh to move.

 

Looks like it might work, although if the factory crossover is tuned different than the crossovers for the speakers, you might be missing some frequencies.


Also, be careful when you're listening to it. As noted above, the amp in the stereo is under powered for those speakers. Under powered amps clip the signal when they run out of power, and clipping destroys speakers.


Nice drawing

 

Thanks for the replies guys


I may have already found the answer to this, bus since I'm only using two channels in my regular cab, is there any way to increase the watts to the two speakers? wire both channels to the speaker? I have the fade all the way forward but didn't see any change. May be a dumb question, I'm not great with sound engineering.

 

Your only real option is to add an external amp, which I highly recommend. It doesn't have to be anything crazy, but it would make those speakers much happier.

Changing the fader setting is more akin to turning down the volume on the back speakers. It doesn't transfer power to the front.

 

Hmm alright. Yeah I was kind of hoping the deck would power them suffiecently. Considering that a 4 channel amp is about $130, I'm thinking just adding a powered sub behind the seat to make up for it. Seems like a lot of work to rerun all the door speaker wiring Although it concerns me that you mention damaging the speakers with insufficient power. How likely is that to happen?

 

Keep the volume lower and you wont burn out the speakers. Wild ass guess, keep the vol at 50% or less. Less chance to drive the amp to clipping and damaging speakers.

 

Well, it's hard to hear clipping but its unlikely to happen as long as you don't try to push it too hard. Tweeters would be the most likely to die first.

It may be more work on the front end, but running wire isn't that hard and it'll sound way better in the long run with a proper amp.

 

Well thats discouraging. I'm not gonna risk that. I already have ground, power and com wires lead to behind the seat where a powered sub used to be before it died, so I guess It wouldn't be to bad and would just have to run wire to the speakers.

ok so with a 2 or 4 channel amp from behind the seat, I would totally disregard the factory wire harness for the speakers, and just run wires diretly from the amp the the door speakers, correct?

 

That's what I usually do. Then you'd run those "crossover" widgets from focal in parallel off the amp for each speaker.

Not sure how you'll get signal to the amp, I doubt factory headunits have RCA outputs. High level inputs are an option, there might even be a premade harness for it from crutchfield or something.


Edit. Oh. You have an aftermarket headunit. I just can't remember previous posts

 

What kind of an amp would the knowledgeable folk posting in this thread recommend? I have heard of the kicker Key amp is a good, small addition to a stock, non JBL head unit.

 

I have a Pioneer HU with RCAs ran begind the seat. I had a powered sub back there.

 

Ok so I found an amp on Clist for $40. Its old, but it was brand new in the box never opened. I'm impatient and cheap so it seemed like a good option. Its a 2-channel Sony XL-2501, reading the manual its difficult to determine what the actual RMS outupt is. Here are the specs from the manual. 50 or 35W per channel? Remember, I'm only running two door speakers and two tweeters (regular cab).


and here are the speake specs:


So I have to say, it sounds better, but I can't say its really a huge difference. Maybe they are still not getting enough power? I have them wired up with 16 gauge speaker wire with soldered and shrink tubed connections. I feel like these should really be hitting better than my stock setup and I'm really not feeling it.

 

If you think its wired correctly, I would start with the High Pass Filter on, those speakers aren't going to love things below 80Hz anyway, no sense in sending them signals they can't really use.

Then you'll want to set the gain (or Level) of the amp:
https://www.focal.com/en/focal-teach/setting-the-amplifier-gain

After that is all setup its usually up to the EQ on the headunit to make it sound like what you want. Sometimes you have to play with it and cut back on certain frequencies to get it to sound right. I found with the stock speakers in my taco that it would distort at high volumes, but once i cut out everything below 150 Hz or so it sounded waaaay better.

 

Thanks for the reply.
This is how its wired currently.

And I have the woofer and tweeter wired together as instructed by the Focal website and image in my first post.

I currently don't have any filters set on the amp I see it does have a HPF and a LPF, though. I have also left the gain at the middle setting where it came out of the box. I have played with the EQ on the HU quite a bit though. I'll try messing with the amp and report back.