Fountek FR59EXE "wideband" in Valicar pods

I currently have the 2" CDT ES-02 in the factory tweeter location in my 2015 F150. I hate them. They fire across which puts the left side off axis at a rough 70 degree angle. Terrible for tuning! I had these same drivers in my G8 a few years ago, firing up into windshield, and loved them. Well, I had purchased some Founteks a while back that have greater excursion, cost a lot less, look better, and they look to be pretty solid as a wideband driver in my 2 way front. I wanted an easier way to get them on axis and saw a post of a guy here using these pods in his 2014 F150. Being sealed I think I can get a lower x-over point on them as well than the current 1200 I run the CDT at.

After a couple emails, the guy said he could also produce these pods for my Founteks. Excellent! I think I have enough room to get the pods into my door sail panel instead of the A pillars, which will keep the stage wider as well. Anyone else have experience with these pods? https://www.pods-tweeters-midrange.com/

They do what they are supposed to, with trade offs of course. A lot of times these types of speakers don't like to be sealed up..even if they say they can. It causes the output to be diminished, I am guessing because there isn't as much reflected sound. I know when I was testing locations compared to final install, the output was quite a bit more without the pods. I saw a similar thing with output posted by someone on the audiofrog facebook group, so it isn't just my experience with it.

One day I will get actual sails/pillars built. Probably not on this truck since it has 116,000 miles on it.

Valicar isn’t a top notch vendor. I ordered a set of pods after sending him pictures and dimensions, he advertised 3-4 weeks for delivery. At 5 weeks (in his defense, this was mid covid) I hadn’t received anything (and no communication) so I sent him an email. He hadn’t shipped anything yet, but wanted to ship my order, and 5 others, to me so I could reship the other 5 orders to the buyers to save him shipping costs. I’m not interested in doing his legwork, so I refused, and asked for my order to be shipped. Over 8 weeks after the order, I finally received my pods. They’re decent quality, tweeters are loose and rattle around a bit but nothing some gasket material can’t fix. He’s not terrible, I did get my parts eventually but the whole thing left me with mixed feelings.

The thing that bugged me the most was he never changed his advertised shipping price or time, so I expect all his customers got treated like I did.

My results with Valicar, he shipped fast on USPS Priority. Got the pods in, found a mounting location, and I am VERY HAPPY. Hopefully your experience was covid related issues.

I set levels to the mid bass drivers, verified time alignment, and did a basic run through frequency bands to get an initial curve. Listening to some varied music I settled on crossover points of 400+ on 24db LR. Dropped the 6x9/midbasses to bandpass of 90-400.

WOW, the stage height flew up to the middle of the windshield! With a lower crossover on the "widebands" vocals are now above the dash and the midbass are less chesty on deep male voices. For a "large" wideband these sound very crisp. Of course being 50yrs old and not being able to hear over 15k may add to that LOL.

I will tweak EQ and aiming points as I get some listening time in, I feel I may be a bit loud on these but since they are playing well into the vocal ranges it will probably be dialing in my preferred curve more so than level matching between midbass and wideband.



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Update - after some weeks of tuning and trying different things I have made some nice gains in SQ. I have ended up at crossover settings of 300+ on the wideband drivers. The sealed pods may help here, I do have them lightly stuffed with closed cell foam and that may be wrong, as it actually reduces airspace. I think I will pull that out and add some actual poly-fil. I ended up moving the midbass 6x9's to a bandpass of 85-300 and the sub at 67. All on 24db LR filters. Subs are a pair of Dayton Audio DCS165 4 ohm drivers in a .43ft ported enclosure tubed to 36hz.

Aiming is a fair amount different, the driver side basically points at the right side of my face, the passenger side I have moved it more right and it is aiming at a point behind me, almost straight at the left side rear seat passenger space. If you cross the two lines, they intersect dead center behind the center console. This "softened" the overall response to my ears and balanced everything.

My subwoofers are behind the left side rear seat on the rear wall. With some TA work I got the bass dead middle and upfront. I had to add 10ms delay to all front channels and then bring the sub in starting at 0ms until it ends up in the front middle. This is very odd as you can definitely hear a "focus" of the sub bass in my knee area until you get close to the magic spot and then it pops to the middle. The distance variation ends up being 34" of space! But it works! Midbass is big and I had to tune it down a bit. Michael Jackson tracks absolutely rip!

Back to the FR59EXE's - I am impressed. Clarity is as good as anything I have ever listened to. They play plenty high and I cannot tell any difference not having a 1" tweeter up there. I also can't really hear much past 15k anyway so :-)
Vocal tracks suck as Freya Ridings, Jennifer Nettles, Chris Stapleton, Michael Jackson, Christina Aguilera, all sound fantastic with no straining. For my "SQL" listening these drivers can outplay what my 6x9's are capable of matching as far as output. My curve is probably a little midbass heavy as I listen to a LOT of electronica/psytrance/etc., but a couple clicks +/- on the head unit bass setting and dialing the remote sub level to match midbass to sub works awesome for the wide range of music I listen to.

So which pods did you actually order from Valicar? Looking for some for my FR59EXE. I looked on they site and didn't find an exact match..

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Black Rain

So which pods did you actually order from Valicar? Looking for some for my FR59EXE. I looked on they site and didn't find an exact match..

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I emailed him, also sent the Fountek spec sheet and he made them from that.

They were well made, threaded, no issues whatsoever.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by therapture

I emailed him, also sent the Fountek spec sheet and he made them from that.

They were well made, threaded, no issues whatsoever.

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Well then he should probably have the specs already saved and it would be easier to reproduce.

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