After updating the head unit in his 2016 Honda Civic Sedan, our customer found the stock speakers a little weak for his liking. This particular trim of Civic does not have a factory amp or subwoofer and he was not interested in adding either. For this car, we recommended the JBL Club series speakers which are a 3 ohm speakers that are more efficient than standard 4 ohm speakers. They also have a lower-profile design making them an easy fit for the rear deck on this car. Hatchback Civics have the rear speakers on the back door whereas the sedans have them up behind the rear headrests.
Along with the speaker upgrade, we added a decent amount of Buzzmat to the front doors. These help reduce road noise significantly and help optimize the speaker performance. Honda uses relatively minimal sound deadening on these cars which gives it a flimsier feel when opening and closing the door. Three to four sheets of Buzzmat are required to do both front doors. We found a spot just behind the door pocket to mount the crossover, if you look at the factory door card, you'll find a large cavity here and most brand crossovers should fit.
We were able to mount the unique orange tweeter of the JBL Club 602C Component Speakers while retaining the factory tweeter trim ring. The orange colour of these 3/4" silk dome tweeters gives away the fact that it's an aftermarket upgrade. In the past, we've done many 10th gen Civics with 1" tweeters, and most aftermarket 1" tweeters from brands like Kicker, Focal, and Alpine will fit relatively easy in the factory spot.
For 10th generation Civic sedans and coupes, the rear deck speakers are a bit tricky to get to. You have to remove a lot of the interior panels to access it and getting them to perfectly align afterwards can be a challenge. The brackets for the rear deck speakers are the same as those used on the front doors. We installed the JBL Club 620F shallow mount speakers on the rear. A coaxial setup is ideal for this spot as there isn't really a good place to mount a pair of tweeters. Do note that from the driver's seat, you will still hear these speakers loud and clear due to their positioning in the car. Relatively speaking, on the hatchbacks/Type R, the rear door speaker is not that noticeable of an upgrade.
All in all, we're pleased with how this system turned out. For a factory head unit, the lower impedance JBL speakers don't need much power to push. JBL designs these speakers this way to account for the natural impedance of factory speaker wires. The next step for a vehicle like this might be a small subwoofer to fill in some of the lower frequencies where these 6.5" speakers don't quite cut it.
Contact us today if you're looking to upgrade the sound quality of your vehicle!