i just bought the old series access splits and ohh my lord they sound fantastic ex demo's for $250 , i would of got the 165 a-1's but the guy selling me the speakers said they are now being made in china!!!!!!!!!!! so thats why the new models prices are $259 rrp. is there any truth to this and wat is ever1's opionion on the 6a focals?

I was under the impression the current Access and Polyglass where at least, not made in the Focal factory,

but somewhere else. (most likely China)

only the K2 series and Utopias are made in france in the Focal Factory by hand.

Juls

ones i bought were last yrs models ( 05 ) which were made in france

sounds good, I'm sure they will be awesome for what you paid.

Make sure you do some serious door installation! it's worth every moment and every cent.

Juls

not too serious at this point as i get my new car within a matter of months and ill be putting everything into that and it will be serious hell yeh , so can any1 confirm the china thing?

Why because they are made in China do people assume they will be of lesser quality?
I would think that the materials are unchanged. It would just be the cheaper labour in China that would allow the price to be reduced.

i got the same focal 165A's i love them, what are you running them off?

jaycar amp which i am purchasing soon aswell as a new car expensive bloody amp hey

165A's were made in France, the 165 A1's are assembled in China. Dominic Baker told me that this was to keep costs down to compete with 'everyday' brands. Also some parts are sourced in China for this reason.

First set I opened failed out of the box..... Hopefully not a sign of things to come!

Hopefully not, but again no company is perfect, box could have been dropped, something came off when it was put together etc

I hear ya.

Alot of reputable companies out there (albeit Jap companies like TRUST/GREDDY, HKS etc) now make their products in China.....but under the strict QC regulations as set out by the manufacturers and companies themselves.

You are right. I have done many sets since and no problems to report!

Great sounding speakers. I've heard them.
One word of advice. Be carful of the tweets. The mids are so smooth that it is easy to over drive the tweeters to the point of burning.
Cheers

The current series of Acess focals is actually a completly new range of speakers, last years access range were $309 a set and made in france, this year the access has been replaced with what is called polyglass V1, the older polyglass range is now known as V2 and the kevlars and utopias are still here. All focals are made in france except for this newer lower cost accesA1nrange, as YOU (the general consumer) want to see things cheaper.

I have a set of 165K2P's in the front and says made in France running that with 165CV's in the rear off a Rockford P4004 amp, sounds awesome but i think i need to sound deaden the doors.

What are your thoughts on sound deadening the doors? Is it really necessary?

Yes, you will love it.

china no longer makes poor quality products, more korea and the likes now that do

China (and Korea is getting like it as well) will make a product as well as you want them to... nothing more and quite often a little less

yep , quality control is added onto the final products RRP$..............zion

I've also got the 165A's and I think they are extremely good value for what you get.



The biggest bonus I've found was that you got the tn47 tweeters in the package (which is now only available from the V2 polyglass or KPs).



I absolutely hammer them with 125WRMS per side (125khz 12dB high passed) and they haven't skipped a beat for over 2 yrs.



The best decision I ever made was to use the money I saved on the 165A's (instead of buying the polyglass splits) to get some plain chant and a roll of SD for each door. I rekon this made a much better improvement than if I just upgraded to the polyglass splits without the SD and PlainChant plates.... The midbass is fantastic!!!

I just installed Focal Polyglass V2 front splits & V2 6x9's (both using the Tioxid 5 TN47 tweets), they're incredibly nice speakers. They just reproduce the music & get out of the way, very natural vocals and detail, particularly with instrumentals.

These speakers need the right set up; As everyone's said - They need quality sound deadening to bring out the bass characterists and really, to do justice to the speakers.
- They need a strong and flexible amplifier &
- They need a low impendance head unit. This is because the Focal crossovers in combination with the tweets can throw high impendance loads at some amps, which then negatively impacts the sq of what are great speakers.

I've found by running an ultra-low impendance hu like the Eclipse with an Alpine V12 amp which has bags of power & tunability with the Focals the results are fantastic. The 8v pre-out in the Eclipse also allows you to drop the gain in the amp which gives tonnes of headroom also. I've just put up a post yesterday in Installations/Fabrication forum with photos of the install if you're interested.

CHeers

well i just got myself some 165k2ps for the front and and some 165v1's in the rear, with fully sound deadened doors the midbass and sound reproduction from the K2's is amazing, theyre only getting about 85wrms at the moment but ill be up grading to and audison srx2 or something of the likes very soon

Sounds good. You will definately notice the amp upgrade. When I upgraded mine from 80wrms to 125wrms I got just that little more power out of them (barley noticeable) but all the harshness that I used to hear at high volumes dissappeared and the sound became more vivid than my highest expectations. As you can tell I'm also very amazed at these speakers and I don't think that the tweeters deserve the bad press they get. They definately sound sharper than most other speakers out there, but its usually because ppl don't give em the power they crave or they run them with a scratchy source that you wouldn't notice on silk domes.

So far my splits have shown great improvement every step of my upgrades, and I think it will be a while before I decide on another replacement split....

I'm in amereica at the moment, and I've seen some awesome car audio shops around, but they tend to really go for the bling factor waaaaay too much. I'm surprised to see that the focal speakers over here don't seem to be much cheaper than the one's at home, but boy o boy, if you ever get a chance to listen to a set of utopias at full volume, it'll be very hard to go back to listening to your old set up again. Damn, they are one set of sexy ass splits!!!