This is pretty funny, because a few months back my girlfriend sat in her coworkers boyfriends ride. She said it had a custom install and looked and sounded hella clean. She even took pics on her phone. I looked at them, and I tell her those are xplods and they **** *** and the guy wasted a custom install by getting that shit. Then I did a search for xplods at SD and here, pointed her a bunch of threads about xplods, and she was like "ohh, I didn't know. It sounded nice though!"
Xplods are nothing special, but it's all in the install.
I started out with a cheapass MTX 10" that I blew within a day with a 600 watt kenwood amp. The amp was a hand-me-down I bought from my friends sister. The amp eventually crapped out after a few months. I had my hands on a few old school rockfords which were ok, and then I got suckered into buying a real no-name brand sub.
I learned after that. I haven't owned too many subs, but I've worked with many subs doing a few installs, owned PPI pro flat pistons, e15a's, xxx, and now an avalanche.
Like it was said, you gotta start from somewhere.