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lithium

Buick Century - active 3way + sub w/ nexus 7

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A few other notes. I sealed the wire hole in the back of the MR pod with duct seal (love this stuff) and I add some poly fill to them as well

Edited by lithium

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Since i'm rebuilding my midbass door baffles I wouldn't mind some suggestions on what drivers might be good options to swap into the doors (for mounting clearances). As I said before I'm trying to address the gab between midrange and midbass 150-300hz area. 

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19 minutes ago, lithium said:

updated pics. I'd like to get the left midrange a bit more to the left as it sounds very much from in front of me rather than the side. 

Order a custom fit dash pad for this vehicle. Once installed, Time alignment should be able to fix this with no problems. 

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16 minutes ago, Randal Johnson said:

Order a custom fit dash pad for this vehicle. Once installed, Time alignment should be able to fix this with no problems. 

i was actually thinking about that. I'll have to look around the interwebs for something. 

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Just by looking at the pics, and understanding the curvature of the dash can be a total bitch, it looks like the right driver is lower on the A Pilar than the left. Looks like it needs to be raised up to match the sail panel like the left. Could be a problem why the left seems stronger than the right. 

Understand what I’m trying to say ??

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3 hours ago, Randal Johnson said:

Just by looking at the pics, and understanding the curvature of the dash can be a total bitch, it looks like the right driver is lower on the A Pilar than the left. Looks like it needs to be raised up to match the sail panel like the left. Could be a problem why the left seems stronger than the right. 

Understand what I’m trying to say ??

yeah you're right. The mounts aren't strong enough to lift the right speaker pod off the dash so this is how it will work for now. I can rotate the tweeter such that it's level with the left. Fortunately, the human ear is shit at localizing sound vertically.  

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If you plan to run this section passive on two channels, you should be right, but if you’re running four independent channels and pad that dash, you may catch hell with it. Just Saying 

The more I learn about this Helix, well, you know what I mean. lol 

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everything is active, which is preferable since the left and right are so different. 

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8 minutes ago, lithium said:

everything is active, which is preferable since the left and right are so different. 

Awesome brother, wish I could get a demo. Wish I could help with the mid bass driver part, but I’m still stuck with the same drivers I ran 8 or so years ago. Can’t seem to tear them up. lol 

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Nice work, keep it up.

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Hey guys, small update. I've been spending some time tuning the car and its going pretty well. I think the 4s are going to work great. In their current enclosure they can reach low enough to meet up with the midbass which was the whole goal of this build up till now. I've been doing some of tuning using REW and letting the AutoEQ generate corrections to a house curve that I've set up (I picked a popular one and plan to try some other out). The autoeq seems to work great at doing a first pass of everything before fine tuning by ear.  

I'm planning to start the A pillar build soon but first I need to figure out another issue that I'm having.  I think I'll post the issue outside the build log so folks will see it. 

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anyone know if running 1 rca input to a bridged 2 channel amp causing issues? should I use a splitter for any reason? 

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RCA “Y” cable to each amplifier making it a mono input amplifier. 

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1 hour ago, Randal Johnson said:

RCA “Y” cable to each amplifier making it a mono input amplifier. 

right, I'm just wondering how the summation occurs internal to the amplifier when you bridge the channels. 

1 rca > Y adapter > 2 inputs on a bridged 2 channel amp > summed internally 

1 rca > plugged into 1 of the inputs on the amp > summed internally 

does either case result in a different output from the amp?  

Edited by lithium

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I’m not sure about those class D full range amplifiers brother. I know my pair of 2 channel class A/B amplifiers don’t give a shit about what either channel is doing.

I tried looking at the specs on those but couldn’t come up with anything on this. There may be a setting, may not. 

I’m thinking it will work simple with a “Y” cable and work nicely stereo mono. 

Either way, your going to have Very nice left and right channel separation running an amplifier on the left and a amplifier on the right. If you look close to mine, it’s done similar. 

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I like the updates man. I got excited when I seen the price of those two channels that I went and looked at the 4 channel for my build but they are still $350 plus. How are you liking going from those class AB Kicker amps to the class D Polk amps?

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3 hours ago, jcarter1885 said:

I like the updates man. I got excited when I seen the price of those two channels that I went and looked at the 4 channel for my build but they are still $350 plus. How are you liking going from those class AB Kicker amps to the class D Polk amps?

The NVX 4 channel in my picture is probably the only 4 channel from that batch (PPI, polk, etc using same design) that you can still get for a decent price (under $200). I guess the PPI 600.2 sold out while these polk 2 channels are getting sold off at a great price. 

Ultimately, I hope to simplify my amp rack in my next car. So this will cut down on space requirements quite a bit. 

Very little seat time with the new amps but I haven't notice a huge difference between the two so far. I doubled power so the headroom should be nice given the giant EQ cuts I'm using to correct the cabin mode on the left driver. 

I got a sweet sunburn yesterday while swapping amps so I wont get to the A pillar pods till next weekend. 

8 hours ago, Randal Johnson said:

I’m not sure about those class D full range amplifiers brother. I know my pair of 2 channel class A/B amplifiers don’t give a shit about what either channel is doing.

I tried looking at the specs on those but couldn’t come up with anything on this. There may be a setting, may not. 

I’m thinking it will work simple with a “Y” cable and work nicely stereo mono. 

Either way, your going to have Very nice left and right channel separation running an amplifier on the left and a amplifier on the right. If you look close to mine, it’s done similar. 

I might just try a Y cable just to see what happens. Pretty sure it wont make a difference but I'd like to know. 

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Sunburn in Illinois in April.  Nice.  Not sure what that amp will do.  I'd split it, but easy enough to try both ways.

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splitting the rca into 2 inputs increased the output quite a bit. Haven't pushed the sls 8s past xmax at >40hz before so that was cool. I'm absolutely doing door enclosures after these A pillar are finished. I need this midbass without door rattles. 

Edited by lithium

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Been a while guys. I've made some progress despite the difficulties of working on things in my apartment. 

 

I think I got carried away with the size of these enclosures. 

These are my baffles, the ring is 3d printed petg. The white speaker mount is also 3d printed and will allow me to swap in other drivers easily. 

J4xQXdM.jpg

 

Starting the enclosures. Pretty standard stuff. I decide to build enclosure that sit on the dash rather then build off the A pillar. In retrospec I think it might have been better to put the 4 on the pillar and tweeter in the sail panel to cut down the size of these monsters. 

h4qAsIb.jpg

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Next I aimed the speaker baffles 

JoaI4zn.jpg

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the left side has to come out towards the driver quite a bit. I hope this doesn't kill imaging too badly. 

UWMdOPr.jpg

 

The pods where difficult to wrap, even with this spandex material I used. 

gkqWEab.jpg

My solution to the creases in the fabric. 

GNjzK1O.jpg

Z95ewcl.jpg

 

After the first coat of resin on the spandex

vptY2xC.jpg

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Test fit

J6kN3NC.jpg

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IJewNPI.jpg

9yMv0GJ.jpg

 

ya these look toooo big... 

COwhQ4T.jpg

Had to flock the enclosures in my kitchen... not the best idea

uOzfwse.jpg

 

qN02zJp.jpg

Edited by lithium

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I just need to find a way to bolt these the A pillars so they dont kill me in a car crash. 

I hope to install them this week and start on the door enclosures soon after that. 

Edited by lithium

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A pillars are finished. Haven't played with the tune yet as I'm trying to move on to the midbass enclosure now. 

lBpIpJo.jpg

 

Before (w/ door trim cut)

By847PO.jpg

after (trying to maximize enclosure volume)

16KVMRY.jpg

G36IRaq.jpg

RFtE38l.jpg

Deadened whats left of the trim panel. 

ahBvLhm.jpg

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