General Can I still get Bose speakers?

[penguinpaul]

Just bought a Stilo today!
It's a 3 door 1.6 litre Active. It came with an aftermarket head unit - an alright JVC unit.

Now I've been reading about you guys getting the Designed by Bose speakers from Fiat dealers and fitting them for an easy upgrade.

Would these be likely to be still available? There's a thread on here with some Part numbers, but the tweeter part numbers are wrong unfortunately

Does anyone have any advice on seeking these, or obtaining part numbers? Or would I be able to go into the local Fiat dealer and ask for the bits that are part of the Upgraded Hifi Option.

Thanks for any help anyone can give - I only bought the car a few hours ago so I shouldn't be thinking about these things really! But I am

 

[alexGS]

Welcome to the Stilo and this forum

Since you already have an aftermarket headunit, I think you'd be better off to fit aftermarket speakers. I can recommend either Infinity Kappa (fairly high-end) or Sony component speakers with new-type foam cone (good performance for the price) - SONY XS-GS1720S 6.5" Component Speakers are the ones I fitted to my FIAT 500 last year. The lightweight and rigid foam cone seems to give good sensitivity, like the original paper-cone speakers have.

Most cheaper poly-cone (plastic/metallized plastic) speakers seem to have worse sensitivity than the original paper-cone speakers, so while they have more bass and treble (crisper sound) they often produce less volume of the mid-range - the type you need while actually driving.

The Stilo acoustics are quite good, particularly the front doors which have a full metal inner skin without large holes. This effectively boxes-in the speaker and produces better bass than such a crappy standard speaker has any right to give

Based on my knowledge of the Bose upgrade for Alfa Romeos, I'd say the original fitment was not only the speakers but also a subwoofer and amplifier. The wiring is different but the whole thing works off speaker-level outputs from the factory headunit. The Bose speakers have a lower impedance than standard (approx. 2-3 ohm) to extract more power from the rather small amp. If you connect them to speaker outputs of standard headunits, you sometimes get distortion (I've tried).

Because you have an aftermarket headunit, it will have line outputs so that you can connect any standard amplifier, and by setting the crossover and gain yourself, I reckon you'll match or better the performance of the Bose system (even though I haven't heard it in the Stilo, I'm going on my 156/147/166 experience).

Basically I'm saying that the Bose setup would have been a nice option to have on a new car, and it's OK if you can get it from a scrapped car (with all the wiring) at little cost, but otherwise I think you're better off with your choice from the wide range of 6.5" speakers out there (note with speakers, you do tend to get what you pay for, and cheap ones are probably not worth the trouble to fit )

-Alex

 

[penguinpaul]

Thanks for the reply

I've had the head unit out today, and it does have line level outputs.
One of my tweeters wasn't working - but I'm not surprised as the loom was a complete botch! It appears that whoever installed it snipped the ISO plugs off the JVC cable, and snipped the plugs off the old cassette player and taped them together!
I've ordered a new JVC loom and a Fiat harness so I'm hoping that might fix my dodgy tweeter - and sometimes one side doesn't work.

As far as I can tell, the Bose option was actually just "designed by Bose", not a proper Bose system, so no extra amps etc.

The reason behind thinking about this was mainly to keep it all original, without having to worry about mounting plates etc. Some of the guys on here have done it to theirs (I was lurking on here for a couple of days before registering!)

The part numbers are on here, but the tweeter part number is wrong unfortunately - it's the same as the rear speakers.

 

[Davren]

As far as I can tell, the Bose option was actually just "designed by Bose", not a proper Bose system, so no extra amps etc.

The Bose option does have an amplifier. It fits in the left side of the boot and includes a sub woofer.
.

 

[penguinpaul]

Ah, that's a problem then - the "hifi option" which isn't actually branded as Bose but people say it's designed by Bose, if it uses 2-3 ohm speakers like the speakers actually made by Bose, then I don't really want to run them off my head unit, as I'd imagine its designed for 4 ohms.
I'll have a think - if I can get the upgraded tweeters from fiat, then it might be a nice small improvement - but changing the drivers does look a bit daunting.

 

[penguinpaul]

As a follow up - I found the part numbers from ePer, and got the local dealer to get them down. They were extremely cheap compared to aftermarket speakers - about £15 each inc vat, and less for the tweeters.

Before putting them in, I checked and they're 4 ohm drivers.

Easy to fit, no modifications required and a definite improvement over the stock system.

The tweeters are massively better!