BLD I'm going to go ahead and let you here all the info I can conjure up about my experience with eD.
I have dealt with/owned quite a few different products from Elemental Designs
past:
First subs I messed with were original K's and after a while one of the cones came separated from the pole piece. They were my friends and he emailed them and they sent him Kv2's in return for his 2 K's. I do think that this was good business practice. After he received the Kv2's we put them in place of his old subs and they were alot more efficient. He kept them in for a while but it was in a standard cab truck so he took them out to save room. He then sold them to my other friend, the friend used the RF bass boost quite a bit and he said one of them started making noise. I checked it out and I think that the box had developed a leak around the front. I checked the VC's with a 9v batt and a DMM and they seemed fine.
I bought them off of him and put one of them in a ported box in a girls car and it still works to this day.
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A few years later I preordered 13Ov2's from them and they were only like 150shipped each. Of course their preorders always take longer than they say they are going to, but I went ahead and sticked with it. I installed the 13Ov2's and one of them had a factory defect where the dustcap wasn't glued correctly. They replaced it. After a while one of my other 13Ov2's quit working, The tinsel had came separated where it enters the spider leading to the VC. They said it had probably happened from over excursion and/or clipping.
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One of my friends wanted me to help him put together a system for his grand prix. He ordered 2 16Kv2's with a nine.1 for like 485bucks. Instead of waiting for me to help him build a box or find a good one for him, him and a couple buddies got a box built and it was too big for the trunk. They cut the box all up and put it together with a swear...quarter inch leaks. They also had the subs wired together with only one voice coil each, so the amp was running at one ohm to one VC of each sub. The box was probably 4cubes! I went ahead and fixed the wiring but he wanted to keep them hooked up. He beat them like that for probably a week or 2 and then I finally got to fix it all. Those Kv2's and nine.1 set at 900Wrms impressed me alot. He had them in the car for a while and then his brother got them and all of it still works.
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I bought a 19Ov2 preorder from them for I think 175bucks shipped. I loved this sub from day one. I put it in a pretty small sealed box that was under the recc size. I put about 1100-1200Wrms to it and it never really sounded like it was hurtin'. After a while the sub just didn't work. Like one night it was beating, and then the next morning it wasn't. I was pissed and was thinking that maybe I shouldn't order from them anymore. I checked the sub and the spider cracked right where the woven tinsel was at, and it looked like it was because of dry glue. I sent it back and they said that their was too much glue on it and they replaced it for free.
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I have a friend that bought a nine.2 off of me that I never used and he said it wouldn't work. He sent it back to them and said the the second one wouldn't work.
he finally got one that works in the long run.....
the same friend got a set of edi6000's and says they sound better than his kappa comps ever did......
and last but not least.... Since day one I have never had a problem with my nine.1.
In conclusion.....I guess that maybe it is kind of hit and miss with eD. Maybe they do not know how to do business and they have wronged alot of people and companies. Maybe they are a small company and have been trying to make it by testing different parts and glues and sometimes it just doesn't work out.
But I have also had products fail from other companies. I have had a sony explod cd player fail
I have had a power Hx2 fail............I have had He2's fail....I have had a 800.2 that quite working and I had to get it fixed.
I have had JL w3v2's fail before.............
just me rambling......probably won't help
curtis