I noticed on my dash that there are two holes for small speakers. When I take off the cover the wire connection is there as well. My question is can I go ahead and buy the speakers that fit in there and will they work right away? Or, do I have to upgrade to the premium sound system first before they will work? I currently have two speakers in the rear and two speakers on the car doors (total of four speakers) and that is it.

 

I used the facia grills and drilled a 1 inch hole in them.
I bought some JBL tweeters and they fit nicely in there.
The tweeters stick out slightly and have a black grill so all in all it looks very good.

Unfortunately I don't have photo and I'm out of the country so I can't take a picture.

 

I beleive I am referring to th 2.5" speakers and not the tweeters. Can I just plug and play with the current stock (non premium) system?

 

exactly, it is the about 2,5 inch plastic grill on top of the dash.
Originally there was a super low quality tweeter fitted, my new 1 inch JBL GTO tweeter did not fit underneath nor in the door's tweeter grill so I drilled a 1 inch hole in the plastic grill on top of the dash so the tweeter is penetrating and slightly facing towards me.



hard to see on the photo, but that is the location

 

Do you have the premium sound system?

 

No, these speakers are not supplied with the 98 Standard Sound System. However, the wiring for these speakers does exist, but only to a connector under the armrest. There is no wiring from the connector to the radio in the 98 Standard System.

 

So there is no point in buying the speakers unless I upgrade the sound system itself and run additional wiring?

 

FWIW, I had a 97 XK8 Coupe with the Standard Sound System. I bought and installed the 2.5" jag speakers. I designed a cheap (1 Capacitor per speaker) "Crossover" Network and connected it to existing wiring (available under the Armrest) feeding the Front Door Speakers. Worked OK but really not much improvement in sound. I traded the 97 for my XKR 8yr ago and don't remember the exact value of the Capacitors.

 

Oh yes it makes a difference. buy a good set of tweeters and hook them up with the filter to the existing wiring.
You can also consider buying a compo set as that is sometimes cheaper, then take out the correct condensator out of the 2/3 way filter and put it in series with your tweeter.

The wiring should already be connected in parallel to your existing speaker wiring as the wires are already there.
if not, then it is a matter of connecting them under the armrest.

Fairly straight forward and for sure an improvement to the sound.

 

Right, I found the pictures of what I had in my archive