Same output for door speakers and tweeters?

[Rogalicious]

Hi all, I have just installed a new Alpine head unit and new Alpine door speakers, which sound great. The problem is, my '07 van has tweeters in the dash and I am pretty sure that these are wired in to the head unit along with the door speakers, into the same output. It sounds to me like the original tweeters are being over-driven, which is not surprising considering the jump up of RMS power from around 10w to 60w. I have already decided on replacing the standard tweeters with some more suitable ones, which is what led me to this post.
When I go through the settings on the head unit to mess about with the equaliser, balance etc, I noticed when trying to adjust front and rear speaker levels that the tweeters and door speakers are both going through the 'front'.
Am I right in thinking that this actually spreads the RMS output over 4 speakers instead of 2, potentially straining my head unit and resulting in poorer output sound than I should be experiencing?
Does anybody have any experience in splitting these speakers over two channels? I imagine it's not that difficult, but any help would be gratefully received.
The documentation that came with the head unit and speakers is helpful to a certain extent, but this is my first go at anything car audio related and don't want to attempt any re-wiring without consulting some more experienced audiophiles!
Cheers
Tom

[Coco]

Can't help on a practical front, but i agree, the tweeters and front door speakers seem to share the output. There is apparently no separation between them

[Ol'Jeffers]

The tweeters may have a high pass filter mounted so that they're able to share the same feed as the
main speakers. Your only options will be to upgrade the tweeters or disconnect them.

[waue1978]

The tweeters have a small capacitor (4uh if memory serves) fitted to the tweeter itself so that only the higher frequency sounds come through.
I found this out the hard way when I blew a set of JBL tweeters in my 406 (the JBLs were fitted along with amps which separated out the signals), but I solved it on the next set by soldering a capacitor into them.

[j90xxx]

I disconnected my tweeters as they sounded awful with the standard head unit even before I upgraded.

---

Oh, and capacitors are measured in farads (and one that size, in micro farads).

[andy-womble]

Oh, and capacitors are measured in farads (and one that size, in micro farads).

I read that and thought he was a hOORAY-hENRY, ok yah !!!!:whistle::whistle::whistle:

[BerlingoHDI]

the tweeters and door speakers will go through the front, the door speakers supply the mid sound whilst the tweeters provide the highs. Ideally they should be left this way but if you go into your settings on head unit try turning down the high/treble setting so they are not as over powering

[waue1978]

Oh, and capacitors are measured in farads (and one that size, in micro farads).

Don't know all the technical terms, but what was written on it was a funny uf (I thought it was a uh, but I remembered wrong) looking symbol & I don't have that on the keyboard. A brief Google investigation revealed that the bigger the uf number = the lower the frequencies were, so I soldered in a marginally bigger capacitor (I know that term) & the new set of JBL tweeters survived.

Have a look here & see what I did:

http://www.406oc.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=14933

[Ol'Jeffers]

Wellllllllll......if it was marked uH it was an inductance which is measured in Henries. uH is microHenries
Replacing it with a cap. (uF) would rather be like replacing apples with oranges. On a well built
cross-over network both both caps and inductances are used either in series or parallel with each other
to allow or block various frequency ranges. in this case the component was just a crude high pass filter.

[Rogalicious]

Cheers guys, I'm beginning to understand. After another test of my new audio equipment today, I am pretty sure that the standard tweeters are being pushed a little too far, also I believe that they are wired in parallel to my door speakers, which is not how the head unit was intended to power such things. In hindsight I should have bought component speakers or forked out for 3 way speakers. Anyhow, I like a nice bit of cymbal and snappy snare drum so I would really like to get some decent tweeters installed in the two little rattly cages on the dash. If I was to buy a nice set suited to my head units power output, stick a capacitor and resistor in series to the positive wire of both tweeters and wire them in to output 2 of my head unit (output 1 powering my door speakers), then surely I would have full control of both door speakers and tweeters independently. For example, if the treble was too much, I could simply turn down the dash tweeters via my head unit. The two channels on the head unit are intended for front speaker and rear speaker sets, but in theory do you think my plan would work?
Also, does anyone know of any tweeters in the 50w-60w RMS range that have filters built in that would fit my wagon? It's an '07 van.
Thanks!