I don't know about mounting a siren speaker to the
SNM bracket. 1) you'd need to make sure you could get all 4 mounting points of the
SNM bracket into something solid (thick metal).
2) the
SNM bracket is not nearly as thick or heavy duty as the speaker bracket so it would be questionable. For mounting lights, it's great.
it looks like there is some area below the bumper behind the bumper cover or at least in the fender well to mount the speaker. I generally hate mounting speakers behind a bumper cover unless there is an opening but sometimes its the only option.
In regards to Feniex, they've had their ups and downs. At risk of putting my close personal friendship with the owner of this site (Who also built and helps maintain my site) on the line, ELB overall is starting to change based on his opinions being posted. Some of that opinion I'll completely chalk up to bitterness in the way the employment situation went. Some is justifiable. My personal opinion? Yes, some of the products are completely imported. Others are assembled, etc.
That said, this seems to be
par the course in the industry right now. The only two companies I believe are truly making more than 90% of their stuff in the states is Star and Whelen. Star's been around for over 100 years and had time to slowly acquire things it needs to really do everything in house and Whelen is just a mammoth giant with endless funds. Star makes a good product, but does poorly on their marketing and some of their products don't look as sexy as other manufacturers. Whelen CERTAINLY has its faults. They benefit from being able to use their vast resources to either create new products or take a competitors idea and rapidly move it into production so they don't fall behind.
While imported products are generally thought of to be substandard, the gap between manufacturing techniques abroad and those in the US are not as big as they once were due to the shift of our economy. I personally love soundoff and would consider them #2. They import a significant amount of product. Federal Signal has been importing product for a while, yet we never hear complaints about these companies doing it. Its simply because of the equity they've built up over the years with consumers.
In the interest of full transparency, Feniex does some stuff sometimes that absolutely floors me. A lot of that is based on how I feel they interact with their own distributors though so I won't get into that here. Some of the growing anti Feniex sentiment though is coming from some of the distributors they have because of the moves they've made to compete with their own dealers.
I have grown frustrated with the shift of products and firmware changes that causes them not to interact together. That said, they are finally correcting issues we have been begging for to be corrected. In order to do that, you have to deal with the change. Overall quality coming from them has improved significantly. I use to blatantly refuse to sell any full lightbars coming from them on any builds I was doing until the GPL was released. Since the GPL release, I've had two issues with the bar in all of the ones I've sold/installed. 1) was some sort of freak thing where it kept burning up 4200's through the cat 5 cable. 2) is I had 3 bars (from the same lot) have the tops rust on them. This seems like it was a supplier issue more than anything but it was disappointing. That said, they handled the RMA's to my satisfaction.
My very real and honest assessment of your list:
- 1 Feniex Typhoon Handheld - The first batch seemed to have issues. I haven't had any that have had issues as of yet, but I also didn't buy any initially because I had a large stock of Star Handhelds. The star LCS869 handheld is slightly more expensive but has a longer track record. I've had one star handheld go bad and I think that was because someone pulled the cord too tight.
- 1 Feniex Triton Speaker - To me, these things are some of the best deals in the industry. I've replaced more failed whelen speakers than I have Triton speakers.
- 1 Feniex 2x R/R 40 degree - The 2x is just two Feniex surface mounts on a different housing. Biggest problem I see is people changing patterns too fast on them and one module getting out of sync. It was a stupid silly issue to have in a dash light. The good thing is the new firmwares make it easy to get them back in sync by holding the pattern change down for a 5 seconds and it resets them. Optics choice are key with this light. People here use to compare the Feniex Apollo to Avengers and say they were lack luster. Then they'd never go back to feniex because we also had idiotic and untruthful dealers telling people the apollo (180° optics) were just as bright as the cobra (40° optics) head on. This was a BLATANT lie... and the only reason I can see why anyone would say that is because at the time they were more expensive. (higher price = higher profit). Realize what you need the dash light to do and judge it accordingly. My other beef with the 2x is I've never been a fan of suction cups. This seems to be fixed with the "permanent mount" 3m VHB tape option and I'd strongly suggest using that. People will compare the MSRP of the 2x and say it's cheaper than an avenger... but keep in mind you won't pay MSRP for the 2x.
- 1 Feniex 2x B/B 40 degree - See above.
- 2 Feniex FSM Dual Color R/B 40 degree - I've had one bad fusion surface mount (never powered on right out of the bag. To me, this seems to be the M.O. lately for Feniex failures (Not true for the early Apollo, Cobra, and Python stuff) Most failures I've had simply didn't function correctly out off the box rather than 6 months later. I've also only had one Fusion Surface Mount Module fill with moisture and stay filled. Florida is really wet, hot, and SUPER humid. The whelen stuff I had on my patrol car stayed filled with water. The 500 series mirror beams may have been installation error from our fleet section but the number of LINZ6's we had filled with water was ridiculous (I'm pretty sure our fleet at the sheriff's office did not have ONE mounted on the outside without water in it two years later). Keep in mind, some of the newer optics now hide moisture better than others. The biggest thing I've seen fix this with the surface mount? Don't use the rubber gasket pad and don't over tight the head to the mounting point. This allows the one way breather sticker on the back to do its job.
- 1 SNM Intersection License Plate Bracket - Already discussed above.
- 3 Feniex T3's in red - Remember what I said about the Triton? yeah... multiple that by 100 for the T3. I've sold over 1000 of these things and have literally only seen or been told of 4 failing. Two of those were preproduction models we had from feniex 6 months before they were released. Our failures in testing lead to a delay in production so they could fix the issue. That said, I do know of other dealers that had a bad batch of them that either not worked right out of the package or shortly after. We luckily were not affected by that. If there is one thing I'd knock them for is sometimes the finish can start to lighten up some and they turn more gray than black over time but it's not drastic.
- 1 Feniex T3 in blue - See above.
We sell Star, SoundOff, and Tecniq too. The Soundoff Mpowers are also an excellent line (significantly more expensive) as well. I'm also a fan of the Star Microstar line. We sell tri color models for as much as the Feniex Fusion Dual colors. They are super thin, but overall don't look as attractive as the fusion surface mounts. Star has always been good to me and overall I like dealing with them despite some of the lead time issues I see here and there. They are more personal to me than
SOS... but I think that's just something more on the distributor side of things.
On that note, when I was hospitalized for a critical on duty related injury, Hamza and Louis from Feniex checked on me more than anyone probably. Even sent stuff to my hospital. Hamza's also reached out and offered other assistance personally for that injury. At that time, I felt like Feniex cared more about me than my own agency (I had zero calls/visits from my agency's leadership during my hospitalization). The Star rep checked on me, and I met with the VP of sales for Star a month later who was super compassionate as well. Oh... and Jman (owner of this site) came to visit me a couple times as well. There is a reason we are close friends.
I do feel like overall Feniex cares about trying to help public safety. I honestly feel like Feniex's leadership really has a passion about helping protect LEO's. I just think they experience some growing pains and have some misteps. You are looking at a mom and pop business (Feniex is not exactly mom and pop) trying to compete with amazon (Whelen isn't as large as amazon, but figure market share and resources).
I'll say this.... no ONE manufacturer in this industry has the best of everything. Anyone who tries to say that is full of it. Weigh everything individually against what you need. Sometimes you do get what you pay for, sometimes there are hidden values in things.
