need help with woofer/amp

[shellfish 10+ year member]

Alright, so i have a 98 saturn SL1. I'm intalling a Kenwood KDC-mp435U

with Kenwood KFC-1680ie speakers in the front and back

and scraping some cash together for a a 12 inch woofer

with a ported bow and an amp to power it.

What are you recommendations on the woofer/enclosure?

(looking for good sound yet some bump to it)

and i remember hearing about the big 3 upgrade (or something like that)

what wire should i use?

and last but not least do you think i'll need a capacitor?

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[teamd0m1nat3 10+ year member]

Alright, so i have a 98 saturn SL1. I'm intalling a Kenwood KDC-mp435U
with Kenwood KFC-1680ie speakers in the front and back

and scraping some cash together for a a 12 inch woofer

with a ported bow and an amp to power it.

What are you recommendations on the woofer/enclosure?

(looking for good sound yet some bump to it)

and i remember hearing about the big 3 upgrade (or something like that)

what wire should i use?

and last but not least do you think i'll need a capacitor?

I've got a 2000 saturn ls1, i'm pretty sure they have similar interiors? anyways, good luck getting the door panels off. took me forever, then my viper 650.2's didn't fit in the factory location, had to build baffles and cut into the panels... in my experience saturn is not car audio friendly.

 

[shellfish 10+ year member]

i've already installed my door speakers, the window crank is tricky indeed.

 

[Sandy Ravage]

capacitor=no no

 

[twisztdpunisher 10+ year member]

no need for a cap. for the big three you should use 2guage but 4 would prolly work.

what is your budget for the sub and amp?

 

[NoobieAudio 10+ year member]

if your looking for good sound with a little bump i'd recommend a sealed enclosure and since it seems your going towards prefab then you will also save some money with a sealed and prefab won't matter as much. and no, do not even bother looking into capacitors. as far as subs i'd look into some of the phoenix gold RSD's. they get amazing reviews as well as their components and are very well priced.

 

[shellfish 10+ year member]

Oh, my budge it about 400$.

 

[NoobieAudio 10+ year member]

and you want one sub?

 

[shellfish 10+ year member]

yes... 400 bucks for the whole thing amp,box,sub, any wiring required.

When you say RSDs i assume the 300 mono right?

 

[shellfish 10+ year member]

how about this: A 1.7 ported box with a 12 inch 2ohm woofer and the PG 300 monoblock amp

 

[blimblam 10+ year member]

how about this: A 1.7 ported box with a 12 inch 2ohm woofer and the PG 300 monoblock amp

different subs require different specs for the enclosure. and i think that he meant the pg rsd subs. if you are planning on a 1.7^3 ft box, have it tuned to about 32hz and put a kicker CVR in there.

 

[shellfish 10+ year member]

I was thinking of fitting the enclosure around the sub, not the other way around, ill measure the area that was thinking of using for the sub placement and see. Also, is it bigger enclosure=better sound?

so far i'm looking at the Phoenix Gold RSD12 the 4ohm or the kicker 12 2ohm.

I looked at the PG amp and at 4 ohms it will put out 180 watts which i think will cripple the PG sub that you recommended.

then again i'm speaking from the limited knowledge, so correct me if i'm wrong:

 

[shellfish 10+ year member]

Thanks for all the information so far.//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

So assuming i do get the kicker cvr, which looks pretty good.

What amp would work well with it? Wattage and brand please

 

[blimblam 10+ year member]

Thanks for all the information so far.//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif
So assuming i do get the kicker cvr, which looks pretty good.

What amp would work well with it? Wattage and brand please

how many subs will you be getting?

 

[Electrodynamic 10+ year member]

You can get a 4 awg amp kit from KK here http://www.knukonceptz.com/productDetail.cfm?prodID=KLM-K4 for under $30. They're a reliable company that has really fast shipping, solid products, and easy ordering. I've ordered everything from them including amp kits, raw power wire, battery terminals, distribution blocks, etc.

For the rest of your subwoofer system you need to really sit down and do some planning before you get any further into this decision. Because "before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success." You need to hop in your trunk and figure out if a 2 cubic foot enclosure is really what you're after. 1.7 cubes after port and driver displacement is going to be around 2 cubic feet overall. Measure out the height that you can accomodate and do the calculations.

The easy way is to start with 3456, which is 2 cubic feet, and divide backwards -

I.e. if you have 12" of internal depth to work with you divide 3456 by 12, which is 288.

Then if you have 13" of internal height to work with you divide 288 by 13 and you get 22.15" of width.

If you're going to be happy with an enclosure that is 13x14x23" (assuming 1/2" thick material), then continue to look around for a subwoofer that will be suited for a ported application.

However, before continuing much further (actually this should have been addressed in the begining), you need to ask yourself what your goal is with the subwoofer system. If your goal is to have a pretty good sounding system that gets decently loud, there are a lot of subwoofers out there that will fit the bill. If you're after a great sounding system that still gets decently loud, you're starting to limit your choices a little. If you want balls-to-the-wall loudness and don't care about sounding good, there are, once again, a lot of subwoofers out there that will do the job.

Then after you decide on what kind of sound quality and output you're after you can then move onto the enclosure dimensions I mentioned above. You really need to make sure that an enclosure is going to fit your needs size-wise. The enclosure size will shrink your choices down quite a bit no matter what your goal is (sound quality, loudness, etc).

You can end up with a really solid sub-stage (amp kit, box, sub, amp) for under $400 by doing ample research and planning. Then look around on these classifieds for amplifiers and/or boxes and that should leave you with a good chunk of change to devote to the subwoofer.