W126 front speakers

I’m taking my 560SEC on a long road trip in a couple of weeks.   I’ve never really been especially happy with the sound from the speakers, particularly from midrange tones.   Before I took the car on a long trip, I wanted to upgrade the speakers.

I am also doing a similar project on my 300TE.   On that car, one of the front speakers is damaged and makes a rattling sound.    The W124 speakers are harder to find than for the W126.  The front speakers on a W124 use an odd mounting system, and the rears have minimal clearance.    There was an audio store in Germany that sold a kit for the S124, and also carried speakers that should fit into the second generation W126.  It made sense to buy them all at once, as shipping from Germany is very expensive these days.

Based on that, I ordered four sets.    I prefer to keep all four speakers from the same manufacturer (and ideally the same range) in a car.

The speakers for the W126 were 10x15cm for the front and 16.5cm at the rear.   The factory front speaker in the W126 is actually a small round speaker in an oval housing.  These can be replaced by oval speakers.    They also came with adaptors for the Becker plug system.

When I removed the grilles in the 560SEC, I found a set of old Pioneer 4×6″ speakers in there.   They looked like they were about 20 years old or so.   The Becker plugs were long gone, so it was quite easy to use the standard speaker plugs for the new crunch speakers.    On comparing them, the Crunch speakers had a far larger magnet, and it was quite a tight fit to get that magnet through the speaker opening.    The speakers don’t sit quite flush due to the large magnet size, but there is just enough room to install the speaker and cover it with the factory grille.

The new speakers sound a lot better.  It’s never going to be perfect as I’m playing music through an FM transmitter, but they do make a big difference.  On the 560SEC, I am using a Becker 1402, coupled with the factory line out module to use an external amplifier.

Next step is the rears, which are far more fiddly to install on the W126.