Rainbow Audio EL-X165S 2-Way 6.5-inch (165mm) Coaxial Speakers

What You Are Buying

A discontinued Rainbow Experience Line coaxial, sealed in original packaging and never installed. Two separate conditions apply.

New old stock describes the individual unit: it left the factory, sat in distribution, and never reached a customer. The drivers are unused. What ages in sealed storage is the surround compliance rather than the cone, and polypropylene with a rubber surround stores far better than a foam-surround driver of the same age.

Discontinued describes the line. Rainbow no longer builds Experience Line and we are not restocking it, so there is no warranty replacement path and no matching second pair to buy later.

Coaxial, and What That Buys You

A coaxial mounts the tweeter at the centre of the woofer and ships as a single unit. One hole, one wire, one part per side. That is the entire argument for it, and for most factory replacements it is a good argument.

What you give up against a component set is tweeter placement. The highs arrive from wherever the door speaker sits, usually below your knee, so the stage stays low. A component set solves that by putting the tweeter up at ear height, at the cost of an afternoon of installation. If you want the simpler job, this is the right format.

What the model number tells you

• EL is Experience Line, the entry series.
• X is coaxial, as against C for component.
• 165 is the driver diameter in millimetres, sold here as 6.5 inch.
• S is the standard variant.

Materials

Polypropylene cone

Injection-molded polypropylene does not absorb moisture, which is the property that matters in a door. A door cavity cycles through condensation every time the weather turns, and paper cones in that environment sag and lose their tuning. What you trade away is a little transient detail against a well-built paper mid, and in a car that gap is smaller than it is on a bench.

Mylar dome tweeter

The 19mm Mylar dome is the entry-tier choice and it behaves accordingly: it extends cleanly and costs almost nothing to build, but it is brighter and less forgiving than the silk domes further up the Rainbow range. On a factory head unit playing compressed audio, expect it to be lively rather than smooth.

Power and Fitment

Rainbow published two spec sheets for this model with differing figures. Both are listed in the Specifications tab rather than one being chosen. The practical reading is that this is a 50 to 60W RMS driver that wants 20 to 30W as a minimum and should not see more than about 60W per channel.

• Head unit power will drive these. At 86 to 90dB sensitivity depending on sheet, they play acceptably on 15 to 22W. An amplifier in the 40 to 60W range is where they wake up.
• 165mm DIN mounting fits most European doors directly. Most Japanese and American cars need an adapter plate, not supplied.
• Check depth before you commit. Window glass drops into the door cavity and a driver that fouls it destroys itself the first time the window comes down.

Who This Suits

Installation

• Pull the door card, keep the clips, and test-fit dry with the window both up and down before wiring.
• Wire straight from the head unit or amplifier. A coaxial needs no external crossover.
• Seal the door card and any large service holes. A door that leaks bass out the back of the driver sounds thin no matter what is mounted in it.
• Deadening the outer skin is the cheapest improvement available to any door speaker and the one most often skipped.