SinisterSounds

Hrm. 'Amp that is severely underpowered'. Where did I say that my amp was underpowered? I said I ran the sub at 100watts. I was running the sub off of a Rockford T4004, but when I called up RE's tech department to see how much the sub could take before it would blow, they said 200 watts. I believe the amp put out around 150-175 per channel, so to err on the side of caution I ran it at 4ohm's to start with. As for the crappy box; yes, the bandpass is crap. I'll agree to that, but the sealed box wasn't. Sealed was 1.25 cu ft. Now, correct me if I'm wrong (I'm sure you will anyway), but isn't the recommended enclosure size for a RE12 1.25? What about Type R? This is actually getting off topic. The guy asks about what everyones OPINION is on a good sub he should get, and I gave my opinion. I'm not saying you have to agree with my opinion, but I do not see a point in bashing EVERY reply that I have.

RE's, compared to a JL 12w3 or a Type R, in my opinion did suck. You also have to take into account that I listen to my music loud, and only had about 100 watts going into the RE. I listen to the same songs with every sub, and for example, my Three Six Mafia cd didnt hit as good with the RE's. Am I sure they can get loud in the right box? Sure. Did I personally think they were the greatest subs ever made? Hell no. And yeah, I'm sure they probably CAN sound good in a ported box, but I was using a box that was tuned to the factory specs (Whatever the hell the Qlogic bandpass enclosure is tuned at, the old school one with the plexiglass). Again, they probably sound good tuned, but I personally didn't enjoy them. But then again, its an opinion, and like arsehos, everyone has one. You may think JL's suck, or that MTX is the best brand in the world, and that would be your opinion. I didn't think that anyone here had to praise RE. RE is a great brand, and I'm dying to get a SX. But entry level subs are exactly that. Alex

Yeah, only problem with that is that I priced around. $80 to install an amp kit at one clear across town, $75 to install at a local store, and $100 to install at the other two car audio shops around here. I'm strapped for cash right now, and when I asked what about if I ran all wiring and they did the 'finish' behind the dash, I was still quoted over $75.

I recently picked up a 05 Impala, and due to a problem with my other car, am stripping out the wiring kit in it to throw in the impala. I have an Aftermarket deck in my other car (A Grand Am), but I believe it has a short or something thats screwing up my electrical system >=( Anyhow, I had a buddy do my wiring on the Grand Am, and since I didn't have a precut hole in the firewall, he ran it by the side of the door. Only problem is, in Arizona, the heat and weather is horrible, so the wire is hella faded and looks like it is being rubbed or something. So obviously I'm going to need to replace that. My question however is : Is there a hole already in the firewall that will make it easy to run wires, and secondly, how would I go about hooking up an amp kit to my factory radio? I have the Onstar equiped system, and steering wheel controls, so I don't want to screw anything up and lose those lol. Oh, and as for what I'm running, i'm designing a box for a 15" XXX (the older one with XBL), and am going to have it firing into the cabin through the rear fold down arm rest :-D Pleasure to be here guys, and hope to learn a lot and hopefully help where I can! Alex

True. But on the same token, almost every sub I have owned I made sure would fit into my premade box. I guess I consider it premade, but it was a custom sealed box from a car audio shop over in Arizona (Chronic Sucks!), and it was I believe 1.0 or 1.25, which went along with all of the subs. I would love to hear what is considered a 'real enclosure', since I figured the ThunderTC enclosure would count as one? I'm Not being a smartass, honestly just being curious. Believe me through, if I had the money or time I would have built a custom enclosure for the JL and the Alpine! I personally would have loved to hear the JL in a spec built box Alex

I can just tell you my opinions based on what I have owned. MTX 5500's - Hit very well in their Thunder TC enclosure made specifically for them, but have horrible SQ. I was listening to the last one I owned (and THIS is the reason it will be the last one I own as well), at a volume of around 10. Normal listening, checking out the normal FM radio stations. I pull up to a light and notice the bass isn't hitting, and pull over in a parking lot to see what the hell just happened. I pop the trunk and push the cone to see if its blown. Smoke comes out of the screw holes (crappy home depot screws drilled at an angle, which I didn't even realize), so I take it out of the box and instantly there is plumes of black smoke filling the trunk. Heres the thing though : the voice coils were fine, but the magnet smelled like burning rubber. So screw MTX. I had a Alpine Type R (SWR-1242D), and it honestly hit very well in a prefab qlogic bandpass enclosure. I got good SQ, and great SPL for what the speaker was. This was one of the few subs I've owned where coworkers and friends were able to hear me coming from a parking lot away. I really liked this one, since it hit very well in a sealed as well as bandpass box. I owned a Sony Xplod as my first sub, and it hit fairly decent. At the time I wanted some bass when I got my first car, and picked this up along with a Baja 400w amp (I know, the CHEAPEST system, eh? LoL ran me like 200 I believe). This hit better than the MTX's, even with less watts. Better SQ and SPL than the MTX. Personally though, it didn't go as low as I wanted. I ran it in a sealed box and it wasn't able to produce the lows like I wanted. Lastly, I owned a Jl 12w3V3. This sub was excellent. Had better SQ and SPL than any of my other subs, and hit extremely hard. I honestly didn't like this in the prefab bandpass box I had, but it sounded excellent in the sealed box. I always underpowered this one since I didn't know how much juice to feed it, and didn't want to risk blowing it. Oddly enough, i had a problem where it just quit working. I had to push the cone to make it start hitting again, and if it was on a FM station it was fine as long as there was constant bass. Once the bass stopped, had to push the cone again. I called JL (Their tech support SUCKS!), and was told it was a problem with the cone and the sub was worthless now. I then called my local car audio place and they told me that the voice coils werent getting any energy (One of the tinsel leads had come loose), so I asked if there was a problem hooking the amp wires directly to the Voicecoils and was told no. About a week later the sub quit working again, and had scorch marks over the voice coils, and one was completely seperated while the other was hanging by a thread. You have to love crappy advice from idiots at a car audio shop. Maybe I just have a crappy amp (Rockford T4004). I now have a pair of RE Audio RE12D4 subs. These things suck. Horrible SQ, and they don't get very loud. Luckily I'm selling these and getting a 15 inch XXX lol. Alex

You can always pick it up as yours lol. The dude is selling it locally (Im in Mesa, and if I had the cash I would buy it based just on your install alone

Hi, im new. LoL hooray for introductions. Anyhow, I currently have the following: 1 12" JL 12w3v2-d4 1 12" Alpine Swr-1242D 1 Kenwood KAC-7202 At this time, I love having both subs but can only hook one up at a time. I drive a GrandAm, and its a pain in the ass to try to fix any boxes between the wheel-wells. Ive only had success with one box so far, and that was the ThunderTC enclosure I had for my 5500's before I sold them. I have two seperate sealed boxes for each, and want to try to place them in both corners of my trunk, but wire them to the sub to provide the most bass possible. Either one works great in parallel, but when I do that and bridge it, the amp runs VERY hot and goes into Protect mode (I suppose its running around 1 ohm at that point?) The amp is stable at 2 ohms, and I don't want competition level bass with it, but running it in series to one channel of the amp each SUCKS! What I want to try to do is figure a way to wire the boxes to each other, somehow making the amp see a 8ohm load, then run it bridged. This would give each sub roughly 200 something watts. My question is : Would this be better at providing bass, and how would I do it using both boxes without drilling any new holes INTO to the boxes I already have, or would it be better to wire each sub in series, then each to a channel of the sub? Sorry to ramble on! and thanks for the help ahead of time! Alex

Crap...I just realized I could bridge both subs on the amp, no matter how they are wired. For the longest time with this amp I have thought only one sub could be bridged to it. Thats what skipping over the manual does Hopefully my next post will not be something dumbass like this Alex