I traded in my SI for a 2010 Civic hybrid, I love the gas mileage and the leather interior but man I was used to the great stereo in the SI with the sub that came stock. I'm afraid to let any best buy kiddies touch the panels, anyone have any stories or suggestions?

 

In my 07 HCHII I could hardly hear my dash mounted tweeters at all compared to my 05 accords tweeters, so I ripped out the factory front door speakers and dash tweeters and replaced them with JBL component speakers. They are MUCH MUCH clearer then the stock tweeters, but don't expect much bass increase cause the factory radio just doesn't have the beans to do it. The mistake I did make was not replacing the rear speakers at the same, so the tonal quality is definitely off between the clearer fronts and the muddy rears. I may go cheap and feed the rear speakers into a defeatable crossover and amps for new rear speakers and a 8" sub that I can easily remove when I travel since the trunks space is eaten up by the IMA battery pack.

The other issue I have now is the factory stereo has a weird equalization curve at low volumes the over boosts the treble (probably because of the crappy factory tweeters) and lacks any bass. At higher volumes, the curve seems to flatten out a lot.

If I had the money allocation and wanted to do it right, i'd install a clean sweep or something similar and feed the factory stereo into it, then have it drive some amps and control the volume from the clean sweep instead of the stereo. Its expensive, but it keeps everything factory looking inside.

Otherwise, if you don't mind changing up the dash, there are kits to install aftermarket stereos which would be much cheaper to doing the clean sweep and amps.

Just my experiences so far.

P.S. I'm sorry u traded in your SI...I had an '05 6 Speed V6 2 door Accord that I traded in for my 07 HCH II because I really needed a 4 door for my job and kids. Would not make that same decision again if I had to do it over again.

 

I saw Honda actually has a bass kit or something along those lines that comes with an amp, not sure how good it is, I think it was around $200

Found it:
http://automobiles.honda.com/civic-h...ory=CIVIC10352

Not exactly cheap, I'd probably be better off doing it myself but I would definitely like to keep the factory stereo, last thing I want is my car to be a target for some kiddies.

I definitely miss the SI but ive been averaging 52/53 MPG going to work and back, including the city driving and with the numbers I do in miles it just made sense. 4 door is nice also. I put 72000 miles on my SI in 3 years, I'll certainly miss passing cars on the country roads...that was a ton of fun. But I do have a lot of fun seeing how high I can get the MPG numbers

 

Definitely why i like to keep the factory look instead of putting in an aftermarket amp. I also forgot to mention it was some work replacing the door speakers, I had to cut the driver out of their plastic holder and take a hacksaw to the plastic rim in front them and rip the remainder out so I could reuse the bracket to mount the aftermarket speakers in. The backs looked like they'd take some custom work as well.

200 seems to be a good price...it includes an amp and it will all be factory so it should be easy to install...where did you find it for that much? I usually get everything from http://www.handa-accessories.com/civic.html and its 275 there. at that point almost worth doing something custom.

 

I did a little work but wanted to be inconspicuous so I left the head unit (which is decent quality, I think made by Alpine but just under-powered). I upgraded the door and rear speakers, added a sub, and also did an amp. Nothing too crazy, but the addition of the power coupled with the sub and better speakers makes it sound much much better. Night and day.

 

talk about your crummy timing...my driver side speaker quit this week...i think the i pulled it and it looks like the driver is corroded. They were good JBL components too.

Moral of the story: go ahead and purchase the rubber seals to put on the backs of the speakers to keep the water out...never had done it before and never had problems before, but guess there is a first for everything.

 

does any know how to remove the factory radio in the 09 hybrid