Rear Speakers - 5 Door Variant

ihpj · Post by **ihpj** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 12:05 am

Hi Guys,

Would be obliged if you could shed some light on the following:

My Mother's Polo Twist is of the 5 door variety. Although the rear doors have speaker grilles, they do not appear to house any actual speakers (I can't hear any sound from the rear doors).

Out of curiosity, would it be a simple case of just buying a set of speakers only, as all the necessary wiring and fixings would be in place? Or would I need to buy everything to fit the speakers? And lastly, as the car comes with a BETA head unit, could that manage output to 4 x speakers or would I need to upgrade to say a GAMMA unit?

Many thanks

panda · Post by **panda** » Sat Jan 05, 2008 1:48 am

Hi, welcome to the forum
Basically, the BETA unit is rubbish. Poor sound quality and can only handle two speaker outputs. The GAMMA is much better, but pricey and would need to be de-coded.
Best bet is an aftermarket headunit.
If I were you, i'd pop off the rear door cards and check for wiring, i'm unable to comment as mine's an SE and had the wiring already there for rear speakers (already had rear speakers)

RUM4MO · Post by **RUM4MO** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 4:29 pm

Yes you will be better off with another head unit, but if you want to remain OEM, then you will need to get a GAMMA - just remember to make sure that the seller can give you the key code for it as VAG are not at all helpfull if you can not prove original fit car ownership. I know, I've trusted someone and tried to get the code from VAG - not possible, also none of the decoding s/w on ebay will work with these units as you need to use the correct cable harness and supporting s/w to extract the code data, then run this through decoder s/w to get it to give you a usable key code. It is desirable to get the radio re "soft coded" for use in the Polo - I think the Golf coding is similar, personally I've fitted my Passat Gamma into the Polo without re "soft coding" it with no problems - and fitted a Golf Gamma in my Passat without re "soft coding" it - I've since corrected all that. Only one thing, and it can not be changed with "soft coding" - as far as I know, the viewing angle for the display if the radio is fitted into the top slot is wrong as viewed from the driver's seat - but I can live with that - maybe that is why VW said the radio can not be fittd in the top slot!

ihpj · Post by **ihpj** » Sun Jan 06, 2008 5:20 pm

Thanks guys.

I'm going to leave the BETA in there for the time being. I haven't started to pull trim off to see what I might find in the rear doors (yet!) - so I guess time will tell. I was hoping that someone else might have a similar vehicle and have already explored this and could post back their findings. I mean if the wiring is all there (just minus the speakers themselves) then I think it would be an easy upgrade. However, if there is no wiring, then I'm not going to get involved with laying the wire etc. and leave the car as is.

The issue son the GAMME unit have really made me think twice - though I'll see if anyone on the Forum is selling such a unit over time - hopefully they will be safer to buy from.

If anyone has explored this themselves please let me know how you got on?