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how would you go about finding your stereos max undistorted volume? you have an o-scope lying around? It's impossible to do with music. It's dynamic. All music is different therefor all setting would be different for every song played. Besides speakers are rated at 10% distortion and subwoofers are rated at 20% distortion. Which means you can play a subwoofer up to 20% distortion and it not be audible. So tuning an amp for no distortion is worthless.

Passenger's side: Two large panels are for amps, the small panel is for my distro block Driver's side: Two of the panels are for amps, 3rd is for my processor And my baby. She wanted to be in the pictures There is a third picture where she was completely unprompted, but ended up flashing the shocker while just doing goofy stuff with her hands....LOL Turned out fuzzy though.

Well this weekend has been eventful. I was sure I wasn't going to have enough time to do all 3 and I was correct in my assumption. However, I took a giant stab at it and have took some pics along the way. I have been doing this a little at a time so if you have any advice then by all means. This is my first attempt at reconing any sub and I will be the first to tell you that if anyone uses as much glue as what came on these things then just let someone else do it if the price is negligible. It's different if the sub/motor is worth reconing to begin with, but what the hell I need to learn anyway right? So to start things off let's take a look at the culprits. Ok, seems harmless. So let's take a closer look at those 3 drop in's. Well, this one seems a little bent outta shape upon closer inspection. Nothing a point finger and thumb couldn't fix though. This one was the best out of the bunch with no bents or blemishes at all. If you look close at this one you can see a waviness of the sort at the base of the former. With extreme precision and a pair of needlenosed pliers I managed to piss myself off a few times. Then I set it down and came back and tried again and got it straight as possible. Now it's time to tear these things apart and see what the problem is. You should probably know that I ran 2 20k watt toasters pushing these 3 subs. Who knew right..? Seriously though, low voltage + clipped music + bad tuning = this. This is where things started to unravel.. lol i kill myself. You should know that these spider landings are reinforced with super duper hurricane resistant gorilla glass glue. Meaning, you better come prepared if you wanna remove the glue. Kinda jumping around as I didn't take many pics to start off with, but this is what I tried getting the glue off with to begin with. Let's just say hell no to the chisel idea. So after another run to the freight of harbor I come back with these little wire discs. Now these should of been where I started, but ok I learned my lesson and know better now. Take a look at the landing after using this thing. Wow right? I'm sure there has to be a better way than using even the discs. Funny thing is using a full size drill with the damn thing. I was holding the battery in the air and hitting it at an angle. My arm is sore as hell cause this took quite a while. However, here is the final result. I'm kind of thinking about using one of these for the top, but after peeling back the surround I don't think I need to go that far. Perhaps just a cleaning and it'll be good. So that's where I am right now. I will update with more pics as I go along. I'm curious about one thing though. As you can see in my pics the spider landing is 1 step inside and using clamps when I glue the spiders in will be sort of hard. I'm thinking do 1 layer direct then set the spiders and add a layer on top and it'll be fine if I weight the sub down with something on top. Ok so since this is my first time I've decided to do the first one by itself. That and because I didn't have enough clamps to do them all at once. So as you can see I have stripped down the surround landing pretty well here. Here I took some card stock paper and made it to where I could test fit the recone to get it centered and check fitment. Ok, so when people says CA glue combined with activator dries fast they weren't lying. You better have your shit together once you spray on the activator cause once you set it it's there. No turning back now. So i decided to go with glue under and over the spider to ensure I got a good bond using activator both times. It wasn't the easiest squeezing my hand in to apply the top layer, but I'm thankful for having this type of basket to be able to do it with. And here's how it sets now after getting the surround landing glued down and the cap that sets on top of the coil. Last to do is the soldering tensil leads and gluing on the dust cap and then testing. If all goes well I will move on to the last 2.

Glad to hear she is okay! Both my labs have gone thru that and its no fun.

or More seriously neither. Ported is what you need.

Glad to hear that Rick!

Nice work sir!

I vote Brad gets his mod status put on probation for not having a build log up.

Even Steve and his engineer said it sucks for competition. As for normal use, they ran from any discussion of its value as they know it is just a way of making money.

Wife left for the week. Time for fast ladies and barrels of snow.

I'm going to try and make this as simple as possible. If you are trying to compete, you will want a completely different box tuned much higher, closer to 50hz for competitions (assuming you are doing burps). (Which won't give you the loud lows because frankly competitors don't use low frequency burps to compete because they aren't as loud). As far as speaker wire from the amp to the sub, nothing larger than 12 ga. is necessary, and will not yield any discernible improvement. As far as an improvement in the amplifier department, what is your budget? Lastly a properly built box is the single greatest improvement you can make in any system.

Same wire I use in all my builds and home theater. http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=102&cp_id=10239&cs_id=1023902&p_id=2748&seq=1&format=2

Then with those amps and the subs in the right box should be easy to get pretty loud. Getting louder than anyone you know depends on who you know? Who's system do you want to be louder than? At this moment it's all in the install/box.

No, completely incorrect. Google the definition of a gain.

Okk first of all that sub doesn't need over 1000 really. If its a dual 2 sa then just wire it to 4 ohms so you don't blow it and then come back here complaining that it blew

nice progress.

Clipping and distortion does not blow a speaker. Too much power does.

You can spray CA remover and yet it sit. Most of the glue will then come off with a scrapper

Save your beers, you don't need it to set a gain. Waste of time.

Well, Like most any sub. They sound great in a well built enclosure and they handle a bit more power than rated. It's sort of like what a Sundown SA18 would be like if they made one. I actually picked up a 4th one to build back up. For a Chinese sub they are aight. I should add that I do believe that the Sundown SA series might just be a bit better too though. That's pretty much what I've heard, and the comparison to the SA series definitely makes sense. thanks.

Not sure how that is even a comparison...

nice, always liked the look of the obsidian 18s. Have to try one out someday. What do you think of them overall?

SAZ-1500D

sundown 1500 1200 or 1000 would do just lovely

Line level converter hidden nicely.

Install completed. Man these new cars with the push button system are something. Finally found an accessory for the remote. Hits a little to hard for the wife so I turned the gain down a little.

Sorry - no measurements yet I can tell you my Alpine Type- R and Type -S sounded very different (to me) after a week or so than when they were first put in - even when i took a used Type-S out and put a new one in, I could tell. when i first put them in, it seemed like it couldn't hit the low notes, after awhile, the lows definitely became more prominent (to me)* *Right before they blew lmfao Measurements are really the only thing that would support the claim that there was a significant audible change pre- and post break in. Subjective experience does not. As Q pointed out, you might have experienced a change, but the change was in your perception and not in the driver (at least not audibly).

I can tell you it's all in your head. I have roughly 30 different Klippel results from driver before and after being broken in. None of them show any differences that would be audible. However I do not have any that were on the verge of bring blown.

They can, and I believe they have some PA amps that can do that already. The problem is that in the car audio world no one would like them because it would never get loud enough. If the amps were able to eliminate distortion by sensing it and automatically reducing the input signal to get the output wave back to a true sine wave (unclipped) then the customers would get uber pissed because no matter how much they turned things up it would only ever get as loud as the controlling circuitry on the amp would allow. I can pretty much assure you that wouldn't be as loud as their previous amp and then they would bad mouth the new amp without understanding it was only doing it's job. Pretty much everyone listens to their music driven right up to (and many times well into) audible distortion levels. Even more unrealized by most people is that when the dynamic peaks are at play the hardest it's distorting every time because they've already run the output level up to it's limit and anything above that becomes distortion. Lastly there's plenty of music out there that has distortion of different kinds recorded on purpose. Any controlling circuitry that could sense and eliminate distortion/clipping by throttling the levels in the amp would really just not go over as well as you think.

You guys are the reason there are power ratings on drivers in the first place. Don't worry; after some time in the game, you'll understand why power rating is a worthless specification.

There is a plethora of information on this forum. How you take it is on you. Maybe questions need to be specific because the issues are in your driveway, and we are on the internet. It would be much different if we were in your driveway to SEE it with our own eyes. Getting information is asking a precise question to get a precise answer. Cause and effect.

I know believe me. I have started a few threads and been frustrated as hell feeling like I was getting no useful info. Then I realized that all of the info I was being given was geared toward getting me to think and spend time listening to figure out what I was missing or wanting, and really listen to how adjustments affect sound (quality, output etc.) Everything you do has a huge effect on output from the way your box is facing to something as simple as rolling down your windows. It just takes time to figure out your car, your equipment, and your install.

I had a problem blowing subs too, and I shouldn't have because I matched them to the rms output of my amp...then I see people who know their shit running subs off of amps rated twice the rms power of their subs for years without incident! Sigh, that is when I knew it must be me and not my equipment, a tough pill to swallow. I had two main problems: 1) I was expecting way too much from my setup. Meaning I had a 10" sub in a prefab box to save trunk space and I thought it should shake my rear view mirror off of my windshield...now I am not saying you are as ignorant as me, I only bring my problem up because it led to the real reason my shit kept failing... 2) I HAD NO IDEA HOW TO SET THINGS UP PROPERLY! My goals were also not clearly defined, I had no idea what I wanted. I thought bass was bass, you hook it up, it shakes your brain. So when I wasn't getting what I wanted I boosted the gains, then turned down the gains and turned up the bass boost, then turned up the gains again, then messed with the eq, and like magic I had the sound I was looking for followed shortly after by the smell of a burnt sub coming from my trunk. Then back to square one. I still have no idea what I am doing and not quite getting the output from my xcon I would like but I know it's me not the equipment. So I error on the side of caution with my settings until I get things figured out and I suggest you do the same with your xcon, it is a phenomenal driver. Or do whatever the fuck you want just post pics of the install

Just a couple pics from the show today, will get more tomorrow

Talk to Don at sounddeadenershowdown.com he really knows his shit and would be able to tell you what is the best approach and what you should use. He will make sure you do not buy more that you actually need.

Momma has some bass, not much, but will be fine until I get her an amp.

to the forum! Unfortunately it sounds as though you've driven the sub beyond it's mechanical limits and damaged the point there the tinsel leads are soldered onto the voice coil. What kind of enclosure do you have it in and what are the specifications on it? That's a Rockford Fosgate BD1500 correct? If you had it in a ported enclosure that was tuned fairly high playing music with very low frequencies it could have very well unloaded in the enclosure. Coupled with the fact that most Rockford amps have an SSF that is static, or non adjustable, unless you're tuned close to the frequency the SSF is set to it's not doing much to protect the sub from unloading. Hate to hear such a nice sub is not working right. Hopefully you can get the problem that caused it figured out and the sub reconed easily enough.

I would go for a single 15. That would help achieve the lows you want. A 12 hits the same lows but more cone area will do it louder. I love a 30hz tuning, seems to give a flat response if the correct port area and design is done. A lot of subs will achieve your goal. SSA is a great choice

I would totally go for the Xcon. Those subs are built for the loooooowwws. Let us know which sub you pick!

Yeah the Xcon fits all your requirements.

Right away the Xcon comes to mind for what you want. My Zcon sounds amazing and the Xcon is suppose to be even better. You won't have to worry about blowing anything if you have the gain set right and the box design is good. What size sub are you looking at? You can only get a 12" with those dimensions and that's with okay port area. Also the lows will be more determined with the box rather the sub.

Fi Q, SSA ICON, or XCON. Thumbs down to TC sounds.

Still can't believe it is only 1 12" on 500 watts