• Protip: Profile posts are public! Use Conversations to message other members privately. Everyone can see the content of a profile post.

After market Subwoofer in glove box??

Joined
4 August 2004
Messages
98
Location
New York
I went to a custom auto sound place over the weekend and told them I need bass without giving up trunk space in my car as an addition to my factory stereo. They gave me an estimate to place an 8" JL Audio Subwoofer in the glove box, and an amp in the trunk. They said they can install the sub inside the glove box, and that the car will still look completley stock, they will be creating a custom enclosure, and that they have done other NSXs. I wanted to ask to see if any prime members have done this before I continue, and their experiences. The shop seems to have done a lot of great custom installs, but I thought I would still ask around first.

Thanks,
Ajay
 
I've heard of this being done but why go that approach when you can use the factory subwoofer space in the floor? Especially since it's an 8" sub, that's an easy fit. Dali sells this box.

Putting the subwoofer in the glovebox area will introduce more vibration into the dash than if you had a sub in the floor. You could rattle a lot of things loose, I'd have to believe you'll be fighting battles with vibration in the long run.
 
Why give up your glove box? Mount it in the passenger footwell space where the OEM Bose speaker was. With an 8" speaker you will have no problem fitting it in there with no loss of original legroom.
Incidentally I have not ever seen a sub located in the glovebox - ask your installer for pictures of this to vaildate their claim they have done others. If they truly were intimate with the NSX I would imagine they would use the obvious location.
If you don't want to give up any trunk space, you may be able to mount the amp under or behind the passenger seat.
 
D'Ecosse said:
Why give up your glove box? Mount it in the passenger footwell space where the OEM Bose speaker was. With an 8" speaker you will have no problem fitting it in there with no loss of original legroom.
Incidentally I have not ever seen a sub located in the glovebox - ask your installer for pictures of this to vaildate their claim they have done others. If they truly were intimate with the NSX I would imagine they would use the obvious location.
If you don't want to give up any trunk space, you may be able to mount the amp under or behind the passenger seat.

We have an OEM Bose speaker in the passenger side footwell?
 
charleysung said:
We have an OEM Bose speaker in the passenger side footwell?

It's not much of a subwoofer but yes, there's a sub in your passenger footwell. It's really a plastic, ported box with a tiny little 4" low frequency driver. It does an OK job of making low frequencies.

There is a good amount of space once it's removed to build a subwoofer box. You can get around .5 cubic feet of volume if you custom fab a fiberglass enclosure.
 
charleysung said:
We have an OEM Bose speaker in the passenger side footwell?
It's amazing how many people are surprised by this (no slight intended Charley) - it is because it is hidden under multiple layers; the top mat, the fitted carpet, then an aluminum kick-plate. Co-incidentally, I had a late-night e-mail at the weekend from a friend who was struggling to fit in an after-market box & didn't realize the stock parts had to come out.
 
IMO, there is NO way they can fit a 8 inch sub in that location, much less make it sound good.
The 91 to 93? models had no passenger side air bag, there is also a vent tube located behind the glove box that would be in your way.
If you have an Nsx with dual air bags, (Looks like you do) there is no way it would fit, as the glove box is even smaller.
 
Last edited:
I guess if it was firing down you could potentially fit it in an early model although as you pointed out Brian the volume on the '96 (like my '93) is miniscule - I can barely fit 5 cd's in there & that's in two stacks!
(I missed that subtlety of the year of the car because it's a pretty much a non-starter for sooo many reasons!)
 
why put it in the glove box when i could fabricate a sub box that will look like its part of the car's OEM interior? Here's a few shots of the sub box for a S2000.
DSCF0267.jpg

DSCF0266.jpg

DSCF0267.jpg


here's a picture of the OEM piece.
2004_S2000_Interior_2a.jpg


I can do something along those lines for any NSX owner that wants one.
 
s2l said:
why put it in the glove box when i could fabricate a sub box that will look like its part of the car's OEM interior?I can do something along those lines for any NSX owner that wants one.

Confused - this statement made it seem like you did it yourself & can do others.
Does that mean you have a business in which the installers work for you or that you have connection to have something fabricated somehow through the installers?
 
D'Ecosse said:
It's amazing how many people are surprised by this (no slight intended Charley) - it is because it is hidden under multiple layers; the top mat, the fitted carpet, then an aluminum kick-plate. Co-incidentally, I had a late-night e-mail at the weekend from a friend who was struggling to fit in an after-market box & didn't realize the stock parts had to come out.

I thought the only subwoofer was the one behind the center console in between the driver and passenger. Why do we have 2 subwoofers?
 
charleysung said:
I thought the only subwoofer was the one behind the center console in between the driver and passenger. Why do we have 2 subwoofers?
Neither is a subwoofer and the one you describe between the seats is certainly even further removed from that definition.
Both speakers are ~ 4" and driven by a single amplifier board in the box in the footwell location; the one between the seats has a crude cross-over filter (a capacitor strapped across the speaker) which actually filters out the low frequencies, to allow only the higher frequencies to play. There is typically very little audio that is detectable coming out of that speaker, even on one whose amp actually works!
A sub-woofer by definition is designed to work at the lowest frequencies, genrally below 100Hz, but more typically < 80Hz. There is no way the Bose footwell unit is a sub-woofer & I have not actually seen any Bose or Acura literature that claims it to be - many 'Prime members have adopted that name for the footwell speaker, but it is incorrect!
 
D'Ecosse said:
Confused - this statement made it seem like you did it yourself & can do others.
Does that mean you have a business in which the installers work for you or that you have connection to have something fabricated somehow through the installers?
sorry for the confusion. I work for a shop in daly city, ca call Motor Music. The S2K belongs to a family member who decided to loan us the car for prototyping. The design and part of the fabrication was done by myself in conjunction with my team of installers. We can do this again ( which we are currently doing for another customer with a S2K), and can adapt the design or use one of the brand new design i've designed specifically for the NSX. I met a guy with a black nsx here in the bay area whom expressed interest in having something like this done to his car and so have come up with a few diffrent designs for diffrent subs for his car. I have not heard from him yet so im guessing he's not interested any longer. I still have the designs on my computer and can produce one at any time. hope this clear things up a bit.


edit: We are looking for someone interested in doing some Audio/Video systems in their NSX. As you can see, we can do pretty damn good work. It will be a partial sponsorship and we are only looking for one car. If you are interested, please put together a list or proposal of what you would like to do to your car and Ill get back to you on it.
Thanks in advance,
Ken
 
Last edited:
Back
Top