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Wow, I go out of town for an alumni event for the weekend, and BLAM! It should be obvious why I don't say what our costs are, but yes, they are drastically more costly to build our sub woofers here in the USA then overseas. It is a mixture of comical and frustrating when competitor's sub woofers that are built overseas. As mentioned earlier, there is few aspects that really effect our build costs that others are not doing. The CNC machining of motors/poles is a huge portion of our build cost per sub woofers. Many brands will just use nuts as spacers between the motor stack and the basket, but our sub woofers are using spiral axis cooling channels on the pole. This does a number of things for superior cooling of the coil, but that is a different topic, what maters here is the time and cost on the CNC machine for each one built. Because of that extra care, time and effort, it cannot be easily done in mass quantities. Also, when not turning a large margin on our products, it means we have less to play with when it comes to expanding our company. It does piss me off when some fool says our products are over priced, they truly haven't a clue and need to be slapped. People have been asking me for a number of years now why we don't have amps or a full line up of mid's and highs etc. This is because the standard now is for someone with no audio background, to just call up a build house overseas, use a credit card and a pre-order, and TADA with in 18-24 months they have a full line up of sub woofers, amplifiers and more. I don't want our brand to be like that. Sure, our growth has been much less rapid as all the new offerings that show up every year, and sure Mark and I are not putting anywhere near what we would like into our pockets due to the higher build cost and much lower volume of sales, but we have near-ZERO warranty failure, a very strong return customer base, and the assurance of one of the highest levels of quality of materials and performance from our sub woofers to every customer that picks SSA for their sub woofer needs. We are trying to take the superior, long term thinking approach to these other brands that show up out of no where, as there is much more time and effort invested into each and every one of our sub woofers. It means we are not killing it in the bank account or hitting the golf course in the middle of the day, or expanding into new major markets overseas etc.. One perfect example, was the beautifully explained break down of the Xcon above. In short, the CNC machining, the addition of a shorting ring (long coil, so inductance was brought down a little) and the much more steel used (instead of a simple triple stack), creates a better sub all around and that is a powerful piece of mind. It is a very good thing to know and to have, even if we are not making much from each unit sold. We run with a very low overhead and keep our expenses to a minimum. Having our sub's machined and built here in the USA (even using steel from California), just does not matter to the masses anymore. The wildfire virus of the American consumer, is the extreme short shortsightedness and only seeing initial price to them, and not the long term. It is more then about keeping more of the money from the purchase price here in the USA, it is also understanding the higher level of quality and performance they are getting. We do gain a number of customers who had a shorter then liked, life span of their prior sub woofer that was made overseas. So in short, to sort of answer the first question, the factors that go into the costs of our products: place of build (USA) {cost of labor etc.}source of materialsquality of materialsquality of partsextra steps taken for better performancethe details in many of the modelslow volume salesmade-to-order production

Ahh, I didn't know you changed your name to Sunday. Cute.

Really hard to make a sub in the states and sell it for 100 bucks...figure your labor, overhead etc. you end up going in the hole. Preboxed stuff from china..not an issue...but that's a road we don't travel with Fi.

You made me turn sigs on. Rofl.

Didn't take too many shots today. Rode for about 4 hours. It was fuckin' cold. We hit some hills, ran the drag strip, rode a few woods trails (they were really swampy thanks to the rain we had and my son was having a hell of a time keeping his bike up), and ran on the construction if the nearby roads. For some reason my damn phone shut down 3 times I tried taking pics. So I didn't get the dragstrip (old overgrown farmer's air strip) or some of the hills we hit on the construction. Looking from the top of one of our favorite climbs. It is ~40 feet high, a good steep angle, and if you hit it right you get some solid air. Looking right down said jump/hill My son climbing a hill. Now that we showed him how to climb we can't get him to stop.

Awe look at ///M5 junior with the cute signature, haha

oh and some asshole memeber on SSA PMed me insulting me.. and he told me to " enjoy your wrecker life" as if my job is somthing to be ashamed of.... i work with and do things alot of people can not.. i take risk and and make decions that involve other peoples well being.. if i mis calculate other people die... so im proud of what i do because i do it well... im a young man that does a job that other wont, cant, and shouldnt.... .and i clean up the roads so you can act like a douche bag and make it to work on time.

buy the recone and basket from Fi. the motors are the same so its just a matter of the basket and recone.

Thanks Aaron, Exactly why I made the switch to SSA and bought the Xcon!

Jagermeister Guzzling Competition?

I think we need a miniDSP thread. I am looking that way right now as well.

That is one badass looking "budget" sub!

This may be the dumbest shit I have ever read on here. Seriously

Thanks for keeping up with the forum, things seem much better than they were a few weeks ago.

Ever since I got into car audio, I had it in my head, that the pinnacle of SQ was running underdash horns. I was young and naive. Regardless, over the years I would tell myself that one day I would run some underdash horns. Well, that day has come, and here is the proof. I stuck with an original: 20install/01_zpsa4e2d833.jpg.html'> Showing off like a proud papa. A pic of the ride they will be calling home. I started off by mocking up the passenger side horn. To get the horn tucked up nice and high, I cut off these bosses on the HVAC blower housing. From there I was able to whip up a bracket in CAD and have it cut out. With the horn bracket in place I transferred the mounting hole locations onto the horn body and get it in place. With the front side good to go, I look towards the compression driver end of the horn to add some support. I opted to make an "L" bracket out of the supplied straps. Here I use a square scrap of mdf as a gage to figure the short leg length of the bracket. To ensure that the bracket is properly oriented, I scribed the outline of it in it's installed position. On the kick panel I attached a riv-nut, simplifying removal and re-installation of the horn body. Here is the passenger side horn in it's new home. More on the way.

Got a few pics here of my doors, pillars and a couple of my box so far.

no doubt, people get caught up with RMS too much.

left by the X? i dont get it.. the X is still a line..... the SSA Dcon fits your needs

Dang, Adrian, if I were closed, we could definitely conquer some hills together. Haven't rode since last year.

Let the force be with you!

the invisible force field around the sub is what produces SQ bass for hours on end.. fyi

Truconcept v.2. PHd in douchebaggery.

Dude, I don't have ANY idea why you posted up on the status updates about me being a moderator, but you should be glad I'm not one. You've done a lot of insulting and aggravating throughout this thread and I for one, if I were a mod, would have issued a warning and closed it before now. Whether you're getting the answer you want or not there's absolutely NO reason to be responding the way you are. Impious has given about the most technological answer that can be given without being the persons who designs and builds them. There's no need for any other response at this point IMHO.

The problem is that you are wanting to ignore the fact that being produced in small production quantities on a per-order basis in the USA is a major contributing factor to the cost of the driver. They could take the exact same parts, have it produced on a large scale overseas and end up with lower production costs. Economies of scale and higher production costs from being produced in the USA are real and considerable factors, even though they may not be "technical". And as M5 said the actual selling price of the driver is determined more by what the market will bear than what the production costs of the driver are. The issue for the company is that higher production costs mean lower margins. I think you are barking up the wrong tree. Had you asked simply about the design features that should make you consider an SSA driver, then you would probably be more on track right now with the answers you've received. But asking about the production costs of the driver brings up the ball of worms you are trying to ignore but add significant cost to the driver compared to overseas manufacturing, independent of materials used.

So your answer is USA labor and quality. Yea that is exactly what the OP asks for.... How about what specifically with the quality? Is the basket machined a certain way with special coatings? Is the surround made of some high quality super rubber that most subs do not use? Is it because of the way the voice coil is put together? does that take more time? Those would be better questions to answer instead of "because things cost more in the USA". And if you guys think Mark and AAron should answer this, then why are you posting? Nobody is asking about the business, I am asking about the materials in the SSA woofer that makes it worth the price. It's not the material, its the tooling. Ask for prices in a machine shop, how much is an hour on the CNC. You more than likely get tighter tolerances, better assembled parts, better consistency in a batch of motors tooled in the US. One good example is a batch of subs made in China and sold here all had the spiders come off at some point, needing a new dustcap, shimming the coil and re-gluing the spider if no damage was done to the coil. Why? Because chinese baskets weren't prepped for glue right. I have a basket from FI sitting next to me. All the glue surfaces are sanded to bare aluminum. The devil is in the details

Lord. You should really ask why the are so cheap.<br /><br />There is ALWAYS a simple answer for how anything is priced. It is what the market will bear. Cost should never have anything to do with price. Value does. The SSA subs are a ridiculous value and IMO should be priced a lot higher.<br /><br />And yes, that is a technical answer. Any other thought on pricing is jacked.

if you find some ones post very helpful and factual then +1 it .... if its full of shit or myth then -1 it. but PLEASE PLEASE allways keep emoation out of it. .. too many times people -1 post because they are butt hurt that is not a butt hurt button

US quality, labor, and parts are expensive, but Americans are cheap and want cheap shit. Why do you think everything is made in china now?

LEt me ask you this. . . . Why are the subs made in china so high? LEt me put it this way. Say an SSA/Fi/AA sub costs $200. It costs $100 to make, $30 to package and ship, and another $30 for overhead. So, the profit at best is $40. The chinese subs cost $20 to make, $20 to package and ship, let's figure in the same for overhead even though it's probably half that, so that driver that is $200 from the guy who had his shit made in china only actually cost him $70, yet he's selling it to you for $200turning a $130 profit. Add in to that, the products are often inferior to the US (my own personal opinion here) counterparts and take away from our economy and jobs.

You look at all the USA built brands like AA, Fi, ect. They are't over priced for the best built subs in the world.

I'm not going to be very specific but, I'll list a few reasons for the pricing. Price of parts, labor, overhead, tools, then you have to also consider they're a business and if a business isn't making money they wont stay around too long. *Edit: just wanted to also state these are from my viewpoint and I could be 100% wrong.

they wont play below 2 ohms i think they protect at 1.7 and will play no lower. rememeber its two amps internaly strapped

He was right the first time. Have you ever seen how fast Alton works? He flies right through builds. LOL!! Sure. That's why I still have the 10" XCON (and PR's), 15" DCON, and 15" ICON sitting in their shipping boxes unused. One bit of good news, I did finally start assembly on the box for the Jimmy (using the $90 Baltic Birch) again. I may ACTUALLY get it done and installed before the end of the year this year. LOL

If you decide to sell it pm me. I'm happy to still have my original. J

what?

As many of us tried to explain in your threads on this before, given the limitations you have on your installation you're simply NOT going to get any real noticeable improvement by just changing the subs. The limitations that are causing sub-par performance with your current subs will cause the same issue with new ones. We feel your pain, believe me we do, but there's no magic sub that's just going to instantly make the problems with the limitations you have become null and void. I've personally been through the same thing with a friend when we were just out of high school. Had a pair of 12" Kicker Competition subs behind his seat in truck boxes and didn't like the lack of performance compared to how they performed when he had them in a wedge shaped box in the car he sold for the truck. He got suckered into buying a pair of Alumapro subs by a salesman at a local shop who claimed they would be a major improvement. Boy was he ever pissed off when they didn't even get as loud as the Kickers, sounded better yes, but not even as loud. You've got to come to terms with the fact that your install limitations are going to cause issue with the performance no matter what sub you're using. Without a larger enclosure, different tuning, more port area, etc. you're not going to see any sizeable improvement.

Not sure if im following you 100% but for android that would be Google Play https://play.google.com/music/listen

and I mysteriously have -14 rep..Wonder who could of done that. Is there a way to see which posts of mine have been voted down?

Just use whatever your electrical system can handle...

Thanks guys definitely eases the mind. I'll be sure to check under the hood from time to time though.

There is a very nice enclosure in this thread that almost your EXACT dimensions required designed by Alton with cut sheets and everything. http://www.soundsolutionsaudio.com/forum/topic/58863-gcon-build-help-needed/ I don't know how well the RE Sub would do in it but posts like this are all over the site and you could easily modify it a little to suit your needs. You gotta put in a little effort dude. As for the sub choice, there are about 50 12's I'd take over that XXX and still have funds left over for an amp. I just pulled it up on Sonic and holy crap - $720 for ONE FREAKING 12? It's not any business of mine what you spend on your sub but just if it were me I would certainly never spend that on a single sub, let alone a 12". You could probably get the same output from a sub less than half the price, as for Sq that all depends on the box. If you tune low they'll all have fairly flat curves which should amount to decent Sq but that is completely subjective. Subjective meaning - what sounds good to Joe might sound like crap to Jim and what sounds good to Jenny might sound awful to Jerome.

Pepboys, autozone, radioshack, you can buy a toggle switch from any of them. Better off just ordering one off Ebay, as I saw a few switches for like $15 each at pepboys Nvm radioshack has them for a decent price

nvm

Catalyst Control Center is a program associated with ATI/AMD GPU's and has NOTHING Todo with Nvidia GPUs, nor will it tell you if something is wrong with your graphics hardware.

If it was a CPU Cooling problem the laptop wouldn't blue screen it would just shutdown. The error its throwing is a GPU error due to corrupt Nvidia drivers, as shizzzzon said. Reformatting would probably do the trick but, that's assuming Rick has a copy of windows.