I cooked a voice coil. I want to build a custom woofer. anyone done this?

[Brokenpath 10+ year member]

So within 2 days i cooked one of the phoenix gold 15's that i bought //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/frown.gif.a3531fa0534503350665a1e957861287.gif.

I carefully took it apart and found that the voicecoil unwound itself. I'm guessing that this is from heat eventually melting the copper wire until it snaps off or expands, then the constant motion and vibration eventually unwinding it.

I looked at this as a unique opportunity to build myself a subwoofer for fun and to educate myself a little better on this stuff.

I was wondering if any of you guys have done this before and if i'm getting in over my head or if this is something that is possible.

I had a few questions that i've googled and googled on about but can't really find any real answers too.

1. What determines the RMS rating of a subwoofer? Is it the size of the voicecoil and the magnet? The type of material used and the type of wind that the voicecoil has? Spider excursion? I'm guessing it's mostly the size of the magnet and the quality of the coil because it would be able to oppose the huge amounts of power very well and not over exert itself beyond mechanical limits.

2. Are the magnets/motors interchangeable? Or are they brand specific. i've looked into the motor assembly and it seems to be a very tight squeeze for the voice coil. So the measurements would have to be spot on or it will rub The motor is screwed/glued on and I'm pretty sure different manufactruers use different measurements but IT would be cool if there was one that ic an find that will fit this without having to take a custom motor to a machine shop to thread exact holes

3. Matching the voicecoil to the cone. For those of you who have done this, i'm guessing you just have to really get it spot on. Which would be pretty hard to get exact. Are there any tricks you guys have learned over doing it a couple times that helped with this part? Maybe painting the coil and sitting the cone on top to get a hole? Weird ways of measuring it?

Any help would be greatly appreciated and I did search and search before i asked these questions.

Click to read more...

 

[disturbed471985 5,000+ posts]

I would PM splaudio and get his advice or services.

 

[Bettr n' Revrse 5,000+ posts]

Send them to SPL and let him work his magic...

 

[Imtjnotu 5,000+ posts]

u already blew one of those subs!?

 

[infamous_e46 5,000+ posts]

u already blew one of those subs!?

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/nerd.gif.c6fa51ddf7ff75f1c0371fbc648f70ae.gif hw wanted to trade too lulz

 

[goingdef 10+ year member]

Did it have a nice baked smell to it and that crunchy burnt feeling as you removed it from the gap? sounds like you may have the gain set incorrectly and clipped it to death!

 

[05fronty 5,000+ posts]

umm when you get the sub back check your gains again

 

[brodeisel 10+ year member]

Bass boost probably

 

[Brokenpath 10+ year member]

Yeah it was bass boost, I tried to set my gains to the best of my knowledge and really low. (Turning it back when you hear distortion)

It just wasn't hitting hard enough so i set my amp to the +25 db setting which then gave me another option which i switched to Low pass instead of mix. then put the low pass knob all the way down.

Sounded great for about an hour until my amp when into protection. Started it up again to go on another drive and the amp when into protection except this time the subs didn't work. so i took them out of the box and low and behold one of them had smoke coming out of it. Tested the other one and it's completely fine, but i'm not running it in this car again.

I don't listen to any hip hop all i listen to is dubstep and bassline/drum and bass so it was just constantly getting a pounding at all frequencies nonstop.

At least it was to a $100 sub instead of a $500 sub.

I'm sure everyones done this at least once lesson learned.

 

[05fronty 5,000+ posts]

wow man could you be anymore off topic there, go make a thread to advertise your crap instead of dumping it off in other peoples threads!

he is in other threads also

 

[Brokenpath 10+ year member]

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/nerd.gif.c6fa51ddf7ff75f1c0371fbc648f70ae.gif hw wanted to trade too lulz

If you would've responded I would've taken them out of the car. You wouldnt've traded the fosgate amp anyways and i didn't want the sony amp. I'm sure you've done this before too but thanks for laughing at me.

 

[goingdef 10+ year member]

yea man we've all cooked at least one, you just need to set the gain with a digital multi meter set to ac current and a test tone @50hz if you want to know exactly what to set it at let me know I'll walk you through it then you will never have to guess again! Also as for setting it by ear BAD IDEA your ear doesn't pick up distortion until it's too late by the time it sounds bad it's already heating up and destroying the epoxy on your coils!

 

[Brokenpath 10+ year member]

yea man we've all cooked at least one, you just need to set the gain with a digital multi meter set to ac current and a test tone @50hz if you want to know exactly what to set it at let me know I'll walk you through it then you will never have to guess again! Also as for setting it by ear BAD IDEA your ear doesn't pick up distortion until it's too late by the time it sounds bad it's already heating up and destroying the epoxy on your coils!

Thanks for the help, I thing im going to go pick up a DMM right now. What do you check for on ac current?

 

[Brokenpath 10+ year member]

yea man we've all cooked at least one, you just need to set the gain with a digital multi meter set to ac current and a test tone @50hz if you want to know exactly what to set it at let me know I'll walk you through it then you will never have to guess again! Also as for setting it by ear BAD IDEA your ear doesn't pick up distortion until it's too late by the time it sounds bad it's already heating up and destroying the epoxy on your coils!

Thanks for the help, I thing im going to go pick up a DMM right now. What do you check for on ac current?

 

[goingdef 10+ year member]

I need to know what your amp is rated at (wattage) and what ohm load your running and I'll look it up it's real easy to do only takes about 5mins and your good to pound!