Review: 12" BTL

[drwang84 0]

Hi everyone,

The Prototype BTL 12" w/ pole chamfer dual 2 ohm was purchased back in Nov 06. Wow it's been that long already! The enclosure I'm working with is the recommended 2 cuft tuned to 33Hz for a solid daily driver.

The amp is currently the Fosgate Punch 800.2 wired at 4 ohm bridged which I have been waiting a long time to upgrade but haven't had the necessary funds. Everything is going into a 2004 Mustang.

I just upgraded the wiring yesterday to 1/0 Kicker power wire.

It was a tough fit on the thin trimming by the door but with a few modifications, I made sure it would get installed. My Head unit is a Pioneer DEH P780MP.

Fi has been great to work with and they have reconed my RE HC 12" Dual 2ohm sub back in December. I will provide pictures of a side by side comparison of the HC and BTL. The HC has the terminals upgraded to the easy to use push terminals which I would like to thank Scott again as they have saved me a lot of time when I like to swap out the subs.

I have previously owned the kicker L7 12" and I will be comparing between the BTL, HC, and L7.

The Kicker L7 was installed originally in an unknown spec ported box which blasted my rap music very loud and upgrading to the L7 was a big difference in output compared to the Infinity subwoofer I sold prior to getting the L7. But when I listened to other music besides rap, such as Asian pop music or classical, I began to notice the muddy sound quality. From there I switched to a sealed enclosure stuffed with polyfill and it sounded better but not up to expectations.

Then I was browsing craigslist when I found a much talked about sub built by Scott in the old RE days. The mighty RE HC. I feel in love with it after hearing it for the first time in the seller's Jeep Wrangler. It was hooked up to a hifonics so little did he know that he wasn't giving the HC its due justice.(no offense to hifonics) But with a sound quality beast like the HC, I knew I could get better results(gets realllllly low). Unfortunately the HC had been through some abuse and it failed on me about a month later. So I had it reconed with Scott. At that time, Fi car Audio was just starting up and the news was all over various car audio forums.

So after being 110% satisfied with the success of the HC, I decided I would love to try the top of the line Fi subs. The BTL was the most talked about at the time and I can probably say it still is. So I got a hold of the proto BTL and here were my first impressions:

Firstly, you must realized I'm not doing the BTL justice as I am underpowering it with only about 1k watts. Ideally I'm run twice thatmuch but it's been financially difficult.Regardless, with what equipment I have, I fell yet in love with another woman, ... I mean subwoofer. The long search has finally ended. The BTL gets louder than the HC yet retains sound quality to my expectations. Beats were tight and hit the right notes at the right times. Not to mention, the sound gets deep, for a 12". A highly recommended sub for the price, you will definately want to consider the BTL 12".

Thanks for reading my review and hope you enjoyed my journey in car audio. I may not be as experienced as many of you are but I love music and it's been really fun.

Edited April 25, 2007 by drwang84