Advice on Focals

[lrgaslife 10+ year member]

Does anyone have any experience with hooking up a JL450.4 to one set of comps. Remember that will be 150 watts to mids and 75 watts to tweets each. Any input?

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[slick316 10+ year member]

I have a JL 450/4 connected to a set of Focal's. I use channels 1/2 for the mids and channels 3/4 for the tweeters. I am not using a crossover since I mixed and matched my speakers (Utopia Be tweeter with K2P midbass).

Does your component set have a crossover that allows bi amp? Meaning it has a seperate input and output for both the midbass and tweeter, not just an input and a tweeter and midbass output.

 

[lrgaslife 10+ year member]

My crossover has only one input. Will the JL amp x-over work or will I have to find a different route?

 

[slick316 10+ year member]

Let's clear a few things up first.

You have the Focal 130 KP for your fronts and the 165 CA for the rears, correct?

Are you using the 450/4 to power BOTH sets? If so, use channels 1/2 on the amp (the 150watt channels) on the fronts (130 KP) and channels 3/4 on the amp (the 75watt channels) on the rears (165 CA).

If you are wanting to use the 450/4 on just the 130 KP, then you would have to ditch the crossovers that came with the 130 KP and wire the midbass's straight to channels 1/2 on the amp and tweeters straight to 3/4, and use the amps crossovers. I wouldn't do this unless you know what you are doing, setting the crossover points incorrectly can damage your speakers (especially the tweeters, cross them over to low and you might blow them).

You would also want to be careful with that much power on a set of speakers that may not be able to handle the power.

 

[lrgaslife 10+ year member]

You dont think that they can handle 225 watts per side or you dont think that the JL is clean enough? Let me know. You have one

 

[slick316 10+ year member]

The JL is clean enough and the Focal's will handle the power, but I don't know your listening habits and don't know if you like it loud or not or what you listen to. The JL makes a lot of power, and more than anything, even with my setup, I sometimes worry about the power I am sending to just the tweeter.

You'll be fine as long as you watch your gains and crossover the tweeters high enough (I'm not too worried about the midbass).

Just wondering, how are you planning to wire all this up? I have an RCA going from the Front High on my HU to the amp for the tweeter inputs and an RCA going from the Front Low on my HU to the amp for the midbass input. Is this how you plan on doing it?

 

[Eugenics 5,000+ posts]

i'd just go active

 

[lrgaslife 10+ year member]

Can't I go 1 set in and just use the x-over on the amp

 

[lrgaslife 10+ year member]

What exactly do you mean fully active?

 

[lrgaslife 10+ year member]

c'mon. What is active?