You know those luxury car commercials where it seems the passengers are enjoying life like they were perpetually in a day spa? I always thought those commercials were completely unbelievable, but now I know that those people were actually listening to Polk Signature Reference (SR) component speakers. It all makes perfect sense when you hear them. Wood paneling and leather seats might be nice, but a vivid, life-size musical experience is the real key to luxury driving. I know, because I have neither wood paneling nor leather seats, but everyone wants a ride in my 11 year-old Honda Civic, which happens to be equipped with a set of Polk SR5250 speakers.
The Polk SR5250 component speaker system
The installation
I won't lie to you; retro-fitting these speakers into my car was no picnic, partly because the crossovers are massive — in a good way — and partly because Honda isn't kidding when they call my car a "compact." There was virtually no room for any extra wiring. Nonetheless, many parts of my installation were like your standard, run-of-the-mill component speaker installation . I swapped out the full-range speakers I had in the door with the Polk woofers, and drilled other holes to accommodate the tweeters. (Polk is kind enough to provide four different mounting options for the tweeters: flush- and angle-mounts for a component set-up, plus regular and angled attachments for a coaxial set-up, which they cleverly call a "compaxial." They also provide mounting plates in case you have 5"x7" speaker holes, for even more mounting options.)
I had to get a little creative when mounting the crossovers — they ended up in the "pocket" in my doors, and required drilling a few extra holes to accommodate the wiring. At the time, as ideal mounting locations were becoming scarce, and my patience was wearing thin, I kept thinking, "is this worth it?" Well, I only hope that my writing skills are up to the challenge of convincing you that, yes, the thousands of hours of exquisite sound you end up with are well worth the incomparably few hours of installation time.
The crossovers were too large to conceal in my Civic, so I chose to mount them in my door's storage pocket
But before I get ahead of myself, I want to point out that another reason my installation took a while is because I also added an amp to my system. These speakers all but require external amplification (Polk recommends powering the system with no less than 50 watts — the system's continuous power handling is rated at 125 watts). I used the Polk/MOMO C400.4 4-channel amp, bridged to two channels for a grand total of 150 watts per channel. There would be no point in running such beautiful-sounding speakers from an in-dash stereo, which can usually only provide enough power for average speakers. When you're paying $750 for speakers, it's likely you can spring for an amp, too. Not that $750 is a lot to pay for these speakers. The tweeters alone are of the same design as found in home speakers costing upwards of $35,000. And don't even get me started on the crossovers.
