Are the headrest speakers on the Fiero considered good quality, even if they are OEM?

I'm about to recover the seats and have been contemplating either upgrading/replacing the speakers or keeping them factory.

They sound good to me, but maybe wondering if aftermarket makes a big difference in sound quality and what really works with them being close to your ears.
Many thanks for any advice or input.

I think they sound good- but, although I am a "connoisseur" of music, I have never been a fanatic about great audio quality. Years ago I replaced the speakers with some nice ones from a company located in the Sacramento area...they were specifically for Mazda Miatas, but came with an adapter plug to fit Fieros.

I suspect that the company has gone under- but Crutchfield may sell replacements....

They are good but old. They could lose a cone. I would look for a suitable replacment before putting on new covers.

I've loved mine, and for being gm speakers, they are really high quality, cloth surrounds, so they don't rattle like the dash speakers after all these years, but they are pretty limited, no really high treble, no bass, limited volume, etc. I put in a set of pioneer 4" 2 ways, with a metal grill and some cotton over top to provide padding (grill and padding reduced volume a good bit, but not clarity) they aren't the best speakers, but for the price, much better than OEM, they vibrate the seat with the bass, and the treble is great, but not ear piercing. I wired the 2 seats in series instead of the factory parallel, so the ohms match up for the radios sake (new ones are 4 ohms, factory is 10)

quote Originally posted by 1985 Fiero GT: I wired the 2 seats in series instead of the factory parallel, so the ohms match up for the radios sake (new ones are 4 ohms, factory is 10)

This is key when using a factory deck. You could fry the factory GM decks if the ohms are too low. Aftermarket decks are sometimes safe down to 2 or even 1ohm.

quote Originally posted by IMSA GT: This is key when using a factory deck. You could fry the factory GM decks if the ohms are too low. Aftermarket decks are sometimes safe down to 2 or even 1ohm.

Yeah, volume stayed balanced with the wiring change (until I added the grills and cotton haha, then it has to be adjusted rearwards), I added wiring between the 2 seats, and wired it to the drivers side connector, so I didn't touch the in car wiring, just added a breakout from the drivers side for the passenger side to connect to.

When the head/radio is only made for 4 speakers, GM etc often "use tricks" to have more speakers on an output like the 84 Fiero Seat Speakers.

OE Seat speakers are 10Ω because wiring in parallel is 5Ω to the head. Plus speakers that close to ears doesn't need same output as other speakers.
When wire low Ω like 4Ω in Series the Output is ~ ½ like sim to HL in Series as DRL is ~ 50% bright but the Head see 8Ω so Output now maybe ⅓ of output.

The main point is seat speakers give "true stereo" to mid range tones to the people so can each hear way better & @ lower volume.
Vs.
Later B pillar speakers if set so Driver gets Stereo the passenger gets "hammered" by right channel & often sounds like crap to them.
GM likely stop installing the first because of high cost for them.

Speakers can "die" just sitting in storage for years. More so w/ Foam Surround types but Paper often fails or gets brittle in storage & fails fast when use.

Dash speakers get Heat & UV from Sun & most speakers Hate this, aftermarket more so, & will have problems often in < 5 years, many < 1 or 2 years, but may not Hear the problems depending how loud you use them.

High tones are often lost in most vehicles for many reasons even if the Speakers can generate them. You bury a speaker in a Seat, you loose a lot of high tones just by the OE seat cover, worse if added aftermarket covers. High Tones are more directional, can boucne off Hard stuff but easily block by other things. (About same as comparing 2.4GHz to 5GHz now 6GHz WiFi that later can't go thru walls etc like lower freq.)
< 200-300 Hz is better handle w/ larger speakers like Dash speakers in Fiero even ignoring Sub Base.

OE iMac G3 & more have small speaker w/ "big sound" but often they "Played Tricks" to get that sound. Even when you take iMac speaker w/ the small ball case out & try to use on other things, won't sound same because whole machine was design to have this speaker set. Same for Bose & other small speakers only sound right w/ OE case.

------------------
Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.
(Jurassic Park)

The Ogre's Fiero Cave

[This message has been edited by theogre (edited 07-04-2024).]

Hell, just do 1 speaker per head rest at 4 ohms like this guy did

[This message has been edited by IMSA GT (edited 07-04-2024).]

If, like me... you're looking for the wiring diagram ... specifically to tell you positive and negative for the seat wires in the 84-85 seats... I found this from E.Furgal in a post he made several year ago. Reposting it to this post...


Left Front Speaker Positive Wire (+): Tan
Left Front Speaker Negative Wire (-): Gray
Right Front Speaker Positive Wire (+): Light Green
Right Front Speaker Negative Wire (-): Dark Green
Left Rear Speaker Positive Wire (+): Brown
Left Rear Speaker Negative Wire (-): Yellow
Right Rear Speaker Positive Wire (+): Dark Blue
Right Rear Speaker Negative Wire (-): Light Blue


Note, the wire colors matched up perfectly to this. I wanted to make sure I wired my headrest speakers in the correct phase (and not backwards).