This product is not available for sale. The purpose of this post is the get input from the Mustang community. These are very early prototypes. The production panels will extend further up the door opening to completely replace the factory panels.

Q-Forms are vehicle specific replacement kickpanels with molded in speaker mounting locations. They are designed to hold up to a 6.25" mid bass driver and up to a 2" tweeter. Speakers are not included with the kickpanels. These are shown in black, but actual panels are color matched to the interor of your car, and will be available in all available interior colors.

Kickpanel speaker mounting is for the true audiophile. We know that for most people the factory locations will be adequate. The advantage of kickpanel speaker mounting is that it provides the longest, most nearly equal, path length between the speaker and the listener. These will retail for about $149 for the pair.

Given all of that, we are concerned about the size of these panels. they have to stick out far enough to allow the mounting of a fairly large speaker, but not so far as to be in the way of the clutch. Since the Mustang has an 8" woofer in the door, it seems that this might be an opportunity for us to downsize the panel to only accomodate smaller speakers,

What do you think?

 

Nice concept - but it looks like they would cover the driver's "dead pedal" area - that I wouldn't want to lose that space as that's were I rest my clutch foot

 

The things we do for music. You are correct in that you will loose the dead pedal.

 

losing the dead pedal foot rest area..Not for me
the concept is good though

 

Don't like them. Kills foot space, and they are going to get dirty and dented, etc. I have never liked that style of installation. I'm not very picky about my music either, the factory system sounds good to me.

 

rattle rattle anyone?

I can see myself putting my foot through that thing.

 

These definately are not for everybody....

However, they do not rattle and are actually very tough. The material is much stronger than the factory panel. These are made from ABS that is almost .205" thick.

If they were a little smaller, perhaps an inch less depth, would that make a difference?

 

I mean even if you reduce it, where in the world are you going to put your left foot on the driver's side besides right through the speaker? I mean for an automatic car maybe, but for a standard, no way. I don't even think an audiophile would trade comfort for 1 extra speaker. Might as well put one in the center of the drivers seat and sit on it, unpadded.

 

Well I drive an automatic and I wouldn't give up the foot space for that either. Again, like others here, I am not a fanatic about the music so I'm probably not your target audience. Frankly I don't think anyone would want to bust their foot on that.

 

Dustindu you are killing me man! That is some funny stuff. Unpadded! Ouch. Talk about good vibrations....

Kickpanels are for the true audiophile. Not every mod works for everybody.

We offer these for a lot of cars, you would be astonished how many we sell.

But the reason this is here is to get your honest opinion. So good or bad, thanks for the responses!

 

You might want to do a more slimline approach like the speaker kick panels made for the early Mustangs ('65-'73). In addition to the loss of the dead pedal space on the driver side, there's also a conflict on the passenger side with the fuse panel.

 

I like them, but foot area is definitely needed, even with the automatics. Keep us posted.

 

In addition to the other comments, I don't think the tweeter placement will work. Tweeters are highly directional and need to be high up and pointed towards the listener's ears. The high end would be blocked by the driver and passenger's legs with loss of definition.

I think a better solution would be to work on a product that moves the tweeters to the A-pillar trim mouldings. The midrange speakers could go in the OEM door locations and provide a clean install.

Regards,
Alan

 

If you are not really into sound quality, as in hearing grass grow, kickpanels are not ever going to be worth while. The main benefits of kick panel speakers are first, that you can buy very high quality seperates (expensive) instead of being stuck with what you can fit in a factory location. If you are into guns you know that a 22 that hits the bulls eye is more effective than a 9mm that can't hit the target. Speaker placement is critical to what is called imagining and staging. Done right, the sound from your system should sound as if the band is playing on the hood of your car. You should be able to close your eyes and pick out the point in space where each instrument is coming from. You should be able to tell the the drummer is behind the other instruments, that he is left handed because of his cymbol placement, and that the lead singer could use a breath mint. Well, just kidding about the breath mint.


Kick panels are the most counter intuitve product out there. Why on earth would anybody put tweeters down by your feet? Amazingly enough, it is the directional nature of a tweeter that makes this work. When you are too close to a tweeter, the frequency response changes dramatically over very small angles of dispersion. In other words, you can move your head just a little bit, and the sound can change a lot. There are other problems with tweeters mounted up high. There is a particular type of distortion called diffraction distortion, that occurs when sound is bounced off glass. Things like cymbols or even a hand clap start to take on a squeaky sound. That is the glass vibrating in a very minute way adding its own color to the sound. There are also two other major problems with mounting speakers in the doors. Path length equalization is one. Sound travels at about 1120 feet per second. For stereo to work properly, the time it takes for sound to get to your from each speaker needs to be about the same. The absolute time is not important, but the ratio is. You don't want one speaker to be twice as far away as the other. If you measure from your nose to the speaker, you can see that the one in the drivers door is a lot closer than the one in the passenger door. The second problem is called left / right bias. The volume of the sound diminishes depending on the distance it has to travel. A small difference in distance can make a pretty big difference in volume because it changes as a function of the distance squared. Basically what his means is that you have to adjust the balance control a lot more to make the speakers sound the same. This is great for you the driver, but not so good for the passenger.

If you have ever toggled the Shaker 500 between the driver and all seats positions you have heard what happens when digital processing is used to compensate for time alignment and left right bias.

I am not trying to convert any one, just trying to explain why people put the most expensive speakers you can buy in one of the strangest places in a car. With kickpanels you still have to be careful where you put your knee, because you can block the tweeter. Usually drivers tend to put their left foot close to the seat. Not real comfortable, but it sounds the best... If you ever get the chance to listen to a system with kicks you should try it, you might be suprised.

Thanks, for the comments!