tommyk90

Needing a short ground is one of those car audio myths developed by companies always selling kits with 3 feet of ground wire. As posted above, the absolute BEST ground is the path of least resistance to the front battery/alternator. Now which way you accomplish that is up to you, but by no means does your ground wire have to be short. Hell, before I added batteries in my bed I had 15 foot grounds to the front batteries and never had any issues. Truth be told 9 times out of 10 a piece of 1/0 all the way to the front is going to be the best (aka, least resistant) ground because copper is FAR more conductive than steel (what your frame is made of) and it doesn't have to deal with a lot of corrosion, welds, etc. But for most "normal" powered systems, a frame ground works fine, especially since you have batteries near the amp(s).

Look at that excurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrsion.

Well, unfortunately the topper on my truck doesn't let it fit in my garage, so everything has to be done outside. I'm gonna start piecing stuff together and hopefully the buildlog will commence.

So, as you guys know, I'm an SPL nut. But as of lately I'm getting pretty tired of the completely bone stock setup in my daily driver. I had been talking about doing a nice install for a while, but frankly don't really know where to begin. I was talking to a buddy of mine (former IASCA SQ competitor), and he was talking about doing some A-pillars with 3" mids and tweeters and then doing some 7" midbasses in the doors. Frankly, I have no idea how that would work or what equipment to look at. I even thought about just going basic with some nice components in the doors (tweeter and 6.5"), and then maybe getting a little fancy with some 8" woofer kickpods to go along with a nice 12" in a center console enclosure. So basically what I need from you guys is a shove in the right direction. Do I go all out (and all active) with the pillars or do I keep it stock looking with components in the doors? (and maybe the 8" woofer kickpods). And while we're on the subject, I also need equipment recommendations. I don't want to break the bank, but I'm willing to spend a fair amount on speakers. I can already get good deals on amps, so I'm not too worried about that, and I already have a nice 12" to use (Fi Q) and an amp for that (kicker zx2500). I also have some 8" woofers I can use for the kicks, if I go that route. So really it boils down to brands of components or brands of separates. Headunit is most likely going to be a double DIN DVD player, so no serious EQ'ing will be done from the headunit. Those bravox look pretty tempting, but I'm just unsure. Help an SQ n00b out!

Yep, I was definitely going to get an amp with a decent built in crossover and then spend a few bucks on some 2khz (or whatever is necessary) caps just in case I screw something up. Beer is readily available. Now the question is, do I stockpile my equipment and wait for spring, or do I brave the cold now? I'm voting spring. Deadening in the winter isn't fun.

I'd say that sounds like a pretty good plan. Get your feet a little wet on this side of things with a simple active setup, then progress from there. Imaging won't be great from the doors without TA and such, but with good speaker selection it should still blow stock out of the water. Is this going in that S10 you had or are you rocking a different daily driver now? I have a 2003 GMC sierra for daily. The s-10 is too untrustworthy for me to drive it on a daily basis. As much as I'd like to do TA, I'd rather have a double DIN DVD player and sacrifice that. I actually still have an alpine CDA-7892 with TA if I wanted to use that. My only real concern now would be where to put the tweeters, but I guess thats a matter of getting some modeling clay and moving them around.

Unfortunately Team Kicker is no more. I keep that in my sig for nostalgia's sake.

That is a very good point and something I was thinking about. I know the more complex I get, the harder its going to be to set up and stage properly. I have a few SQ guys local to me that can help, but I'm not sure if I want to burden them with fixing my truck if I jack up the front stage real bad. Truthfully, yeah anything will be better than stock, even in the stock locations. I was thinking about going 2 way active to keep things simple. 7" mid in the doors and a tweeter wherever it needs to be (sail panel, a-pillar, so on). This way I only have to use one amp with a decent built-in crossover network. Then down the road I could always upgrade to bigger pillars if I wanted.

Alpine should have given me one of their demo vehicles for all the type-r's I sold for them.

Nick, you have my address. I expect it to arrive ASAP. kthnx.

Oh, I agree with you that as long as the meter is consistent then you are golden. But therein lies the problem. How many meters are out there period? From that, how many are considered "consistent"? How many are affordable for the average joe? After those questions are answered, I can only think of two: the termlab and the splmeter.com one, if it's still even made. Audiocontrols are ludicrously expensive, as is the B&K. There's a couple older ones out there that wouldn't be bad, say the linear x for example, but for the cost of one of those you may as well get a meter thats still used today by pretty much everyone.

If he's serious about competing and getting better numbers, a termlab is a necessity. Not only that, but it's essentially the cheapest to own, and the most consistent. An audiocontrol will run you into the thousands. Not too many other choices out there besides that splmeter.com one, but I'm not even sure if those are still around or made. Not at all necessary to figure out the acoustic resonance of his car which is what the thread is titled. Enlighten me as to how the OP can figure out his cabin resonance without a GOOD spl meter?

If he's serious about competing and getting better numbers, a termlab is a necessity. Not only that, but it's essentially the cheapest to own, and the most consistent. An audiocontrol will run you into the thousands. Not too many other choices out there besides that splmeter.com one, but I'm not even sure if those are still around or made.

Q vs. BL vs. 9512 vs. HD3. Oh, and the 9515 hanging out in the background.

First things first, buy a termlab. All the advice and tips/tricks in the world are for nothing if you don't have a meter to consistently test on. As for figuring out your vehicles "tuning", also known as it's resonant frequency, you will need to do a couple things. 1) Build small sealed enclosure 2) Test the enclosure in an open environment, play 20 hz to 80 hz, one frequency at a time, and record the scores. 3) Place the sealed enclosure in your car, and do the same test, 20 hz -80 hz 4) Subtract the vehicle score from the open air score for each frequency. The biggest difference in scores is your resonant frequency (i.e. the frequency at which your cars cabin will produce the highest increase in score)

I don't think that's their impressional use at all. I think of it as an adjustable MLA, versus having set points like an MLA does. If people are dumb enough to turn it up to 17 volts then they deserve to blow up their ECM.

To be honest, I think it was a bit of a misunderstanding. I think of the VCM as an external regulator that you can add to a stock/aftermarket alt with an internal regulator. I don't believe it will keep voltage constant when there is a good amount of current being drawn, even if it's not the alternators maximum current capability.

Why would you even compare a VCM and a capacitor? A VCM's main purpose is to increase your alternator voltage. If you haven't noticed, when your alternator gets hot the voltage drops. A VCM eliminates this drop, thus giving you a higher voltage, effectively increasing the wattage capability of your electrical system. Think of it like an external regulator that you can add to your current electrical system without having to swap out alternators. A cap's main purpose (when used correctly), is to support instantaneous bursts of current demand. It does nothing for voltage. Whatever voltage is put into the cap, it will put out that same voltage (unless it's a shitty cap in which case it will probably DECREASE your voltage)

You need to learn how to properly quote. Regardless, you "knew" what was wrong and decided to totally jack up the sub making any real problem completely unrecognizeable? On top of that, did you know the basket was bent right away or did you just discover this issue a year later? And you truly think the basket being "bent" less than 1/4" is going to do that to the entire suspension and coil? All it would really do, as far as I know, will make the cone deflect slightly, which it's able to do because it's a paper cone and designed to do that. Not to mention that the cone wouldn't be moving far enough for anything serious to happen anyways (until you plugged it into the wall, free air I'm assuming.) My last question was a hypothetical that you apparently didn't understand. If something on the sub is messed up, instead of contacting the manufacturer, you decide to totally destroy the entire thing? I don't see the logic in that one. I've popped one coil on my 9510 and 9515 before. I didn't plug the thing into a wall socket and drop it off a cliff just to make sure it's really f*cked up. I tore it apart and fixed it. Seems like common sense to me.

Dude, one question. After you determined it to be a "manufacturer defect", why in the HELL would totally destroy the thing? Now nobody knows what MAY have happened from the factory, and what you caused by plugging the thing into the wall effectively exploding the coil, former, and suspension. Truly an idiotic move on your part. The minute it started giving me problems I would have pulled it out and got into contact with the manufacturer. If you have an amp that's stuck in protect, do you short circuit the terminals and fry every component on the board?

More cone area isn't always the answer. The key is to maximize your cars potential. 2 15's seems like an awful lot of cone area for a trunk car. 2 10's or 2 12's is about the max I would go with. An AS competitor by me is using a single 15" and is doing mid 145's. A lot of it is just going to come down to building and testing, just like any other class. You need to maximize efficieny no matter what setup you plan on doing though. Food for thought, my truck is louder with the single 12" setup versus the single 15". Main reason is because of the box position and layout. That's where you can see a lot of gains, testing out different style and size enclosures. What kind of fuses are you using? Also, you have a lot of good competitors in your area that you can talk to and bounce ideas off of.

2 of the Type-r 15's shouldn't have a problem taking ~1000 a piece for daily. I burped and bassraced with one on my zx2500 (2200 clamped power) and it took it fine. 1000 will be cake for it. So if you stil intend on returning the amp, perhaps take a look at a 20.1 or sundown 2000d to fit the bill instead.

For a window that big I would personally go with the 3/4" plexi.

Either way will work fine. I just use speaker wire right from the amp, through the box, and to the sub. But I have done the bolt way before as well and that worked fine too. I used plain stainless steel bolts.

Is it one of those cheap plastic terminal cups that you see on prefabs? If so, that could be your problem. You're pulling too much current through a poor connector, which builds up heat and ends up melting the plastic. Same thing happened to my friends setup. Either run some speaker wire through the box or get some bolts and use those as your wire terminals.