ncc74656

i had a BL before and it was in a box tuned quite high so i had no low end. looking at the Q it has a MUCH larger Xmax than a BL does so it makes me think its going to get lower than a BL ever could. i understand the Q is designed for the best clarity and having 2 of them the extra cone area should be louder than a single SP4 i would think.

a coworker has an old Eclipse TI pro 15" 1500/3000 sub that has a torn surround. its torn about 1/2 way around the diamiter of the sub, does anyone know where to get a recone OR surround for this sub?

i have hte 10" pwx and they are massive compared to any real speaker out there. there magnets are 4 times the size that is needed. they need massive power to function properly and do not sound all that great to boot. after buying many speakers and jumping into a few brands i would recommend to never buy any speaker that does not have its full specs advertised. from JL to boss if they do not feel comfortable publishing full specs then i do not feel comfortable giving them my money. I drive a dodge ram with VERY large doors and had to space my window track back 1 3/4" and make a 2.5" spacer out from teh door just to fit the crachendo's... there are FAR better options out there.

regardless of what kinds of user errors the subs encounter the SP4 is the only sub i have ever seen or heard of that CATCHES FIRE. the simple fact they had to redesign the leads to prevent this shows it was an engineering oversight. I loved my Fi BL and truly abused that as i did not know any better. bass boost was way the hell up, gains were set high, it was on a 1500W amp that could easily push more and yet i never had an issue with it. I have seen many kickers blow up but never seen one catch fire, customers routinely buy rockford P1, P2, and P3's from my store and bring them back blown (its at least a weekly occurrence) and never seen one of them catch fire. When i was at Circuit City we would plug the subs we needed to warranty out into a wall outlet (MTX, Kicker, Pioneer) and never did one of them catch fire. the sub i have has the bolt that threads down into push terminals on the side of the basket, from what you describe this is the old style? edit: i just found a picture of the new style leads on Fi's face book. i have the old style for sure.

well my reconed SP4 caught fire today on my way home from work. i dont think the redesigned leads were out when i ordered my recone as i dont know what date they made this change. i emailed FI to see if mine came with the old style or not. This time round it did not burst into flames like the last one but the tensile leads melted and set fire to the spider. i ripped the surround out after seeing smoke and sure enough the spider had flames where the leads are sown in... seeing as there are no fewer than 10 reported cases of this on the forums here and ive had 2 go up it is a design issue with the leads, just no two ways about it. i was on my way to target and playing pink - raise your glass: at about 5/8-3/4 volume as i was not in the mood to bump it hard. when the sub cut out i felt the dust cap as the sub is directly behind me and it was cool to the touch. the sub had been on for no more than 10 min or so when it went up. it was on a Viper 2500.1D that was voltage tested to not go above 68 Volts on the output at any frequency. bass boost was off all the way round and EQ is flat. if the recone i have is the old style i will order a new style but if this one is the new style then i have a Fi 18 motor/basket up for sale.

we have the second edition at work. i think it may be older than i am.

as someone who owns crachendo i do not like the speakers either

I am using a audiocontrol 3055 to tune my system once its parts arrive. I like the kicker KQ30 but it has 1 in and 1 out for RCA. this would make me think i need to have amps with pass through. if i am outputting a 0.2V signal from my HU to my KQ30 and a 8V out of the KQ to amp 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 would amp 5 have a 2V signal or a 8V signal? how many amps can i daisy chain in this manor before i run into issues. secondly i have a KX3 that i do not believe i will need but if i end up using it would i run into a SQ issue having HU > EQ > Xover > amp? would that added processor cause issues with sound quality? a third question is if i am to have all my amps/processors on a MDF platform would i want to run a strap or cable between their chassis to ground for noise purposes?

LMFAO "dumblefuck" i will need to remember that one... well it does give me access to many vehicles and products so at least thats a plus. who knows, maybe after some time here i will find my way into a more upscale establishment. regardless of the future my reasons for being on here is to keep an open mind and check everything against everything else. some where in the mess of conflicting information there is something useful. The enclusure seemed perfectly fine on some parts but was flappy on others. when i build my first enclosure solo i will be using more layers. i am interested in what types of foam or wood is used in glass construction. i would like to thank you all for sounding off your opinions on everything i say, this is the only place i know of to lay out what i "know" for others to tell me how incorrect i am.

the JL did not have any where near that much power. the only part i would say might need more is the bottom as it did have a good deal of flex to it. imo anyway, i do not know much about glassing but ill be doing quite a bit of it this year im sure.

that is correct. 1.5-2 layers (ish). i had thought it needed a few layers but i guess not. the back of the box was very ridged as it had a good deal of bends and edges in it where it fit the trunk. the bottom however i felt may have been a little weak but as it was explained to me the hulls of fiber glass boats are only 1/8" thick so a 200W sub is not going to cause significant deflection in the glass. it was a .6 cubic box.

we used 3/4 MDF to hold the front speaker, placed plastic tape to forum a sheet that covered the area to be molded, layered a single layer of glass to get the back of the box and waited for it to set. we then removed the mold, cut the excess off the edges that were not needed, stapled the MDF to the sides of the box that extended properly and then glassed around the wood to the glassed rear mold. tin foil was used to provide support for the open areas between the mold and MDF face while the wet glass was setting. once that was done we used resin mixed with "kitty hairs" (single flakes of glass) mixed up to seal around the MDF on the inside and then patch any holes that were not covered in the single layer for the backing. then a second layer of glass was placed from the inside out on the box. once set over night we sprayed it with contact adhesive and coated it in trunk liner.

yea thats what im lookin for. better speakers that need less power to give me the volume. shallower mounting and better response curves. i dont know what im going to replace them with yet, still looking around. got my first lesson on fiber-glassing custom boxes the other day tho. that was very interesting. built a sealed box for a single 200W JL 10", i was surprised to see just how strong a single layer of fiberglass is

i found it an interesting read even with the spelling mistakes. that said it seems that M5 gave it a thumbs down so id take its conclusions with a full shaker of salt.

i tested the voltage output using a DMM on the amp. i used my ipod with 3.5 to RCA on my bench. i consistently got about 12V less output from the right channel regardless of input volume or configuration. i can easily hear distortion in higher frequencies out of the 6.5 mid-range i hooked it to at 1/4 - 1/2 volume to the amp. i also noticed that if i tapped the case of the amp i would get an audible popping noise from the tweeter in the 6.5 as well as the right channel would cut out from time to time. the amp was truly screwed. i turned up the volume to my kicker amp yesterday and it cut out on me, i found the problem in my right speakers (that were being powered by this old amp) as they have a dead spot at rest and when you tap the cone in or out slightly they hit 1.2 ohm (4 ohm speaker) before dropping out if you press the cone in further. i believe the coil is coming unwound (these are the crescendos that are about 4 months old). its hard to say what caused what to die but in either case ill be replacing the lot.

i still have fuses at the battery but its a single 0ga wire going back into a distro block that goes out into 4ga and 8ga. i added fuses to the 4 and 8ga lines in addition to the battery. the KX3 is doing exactly what it did before. its crossing over the front input to a high and mid range (my alpine tweets and crachendo mids). i really do not think the amp is a placebo, im going to test the old amps out of the truck today but i do think they are failing.

today i replaced my amps with a brand new out of box kicker ZX650.4 as the first step in my rebuild. i wired up proper fuse holders off my distro blocks to the amps (i had never done this before, i had only ever had fuses AT the battery), wrapped all my wire, and made new grounds for this new amp on the frame rail. i have a 0.1V drop at the amp down from .6V on the old amps. the sound difference is AMAZING! the distortion is gone, the off balance sound is gone, the audio is so much clearer and balanced. the amps i had in there were used off craigslist and ebay - they must be falling apart inside... to that end i just bought a new in box Viper 2500.1D from a co worker for a very good price and im going to swap out my craigslist bought sub amp to see what that sounds like. this is all off hte KX3 cross over and it sounds like a totally different system. the ONLY thing i changed was the amp and a small amount of cross over tuning.

it was not just the shop im at now but working at circuit city, best buy, and just dabbling in audio as a teenager back in the day and it was always said that the higher priced speakers were so much better and that you had to spend money on quality product to get great audio. MTX and eclipse was a favorite at circuit city, alpine and kicker was the shit back in high school and at best buy we were all about the polk and kicker. at NO POINT through out my life has anyone put so much emphasis on installation as i have gotten in this forum. reading into all these websites and books that are being recommended it makes sense why the install is such a huge part of it. i had never thought about the waves coming off the back of the speaker, never knew why my 3 way speakers (all types from boom boxes to my floor standing to my car audio) would always have 1 driver that distorted to piss before either of the other two had any audible distortion. I would think that that if 2 speakers of similar build purpose (say 2 4" mid ranges) with similar power handling characteristics were put into the same type of install you could hear a difference between the two drivers and come to a conclusion as to which one sounds better. then if you "optimize" the install for each speaker independently the results could very well be the opposite of what you thought in the first sound test. thus the install is really what matters in any given speaker application and not so much the speakers them selves. up until a few months ago i was fully certain that you simply spent some decent cash on a great brand name set of speakers and that is how you got the best possible audio.

one of hte things i wanted to do was test these 7.00 speakers off amazon against the 1300.00 focals and see if i can hear any real difference to them. ive always understood that to get great sound you need to spend thousands on sets of speakers made with neo magnets, polyglass cones, and what ever else they design them with. i want to see just how noticeable the difference is

i guess i have never seen a passive cross over that is more than a cap or spool of wire. even my alpines had that cap on its tweeters. my experience with my alpines is why i want to stay the fuck away from anything passive. in regards to "what is put into an install" im not really sure. rockford amps > sony > boss /= kicker. so we sell based on price points and then for speakers focal > JL > herts > rockford > JBL. its pretty much all price point orientated.

the thought put into replacing a speaker in a car is more often than not cost. now if a car has a tweeter and mid range (component set) there would need to be a cross over some where in the setup right? so replacing a blown out mid range with another after market and then leaving the tweeter in place would have hte same effect as what my sony would experience no?

if replacing a driver that is with in a passive system is so bad then why do audio shops do it? reading on the bca1 site it explained much about how the cross overs are designed but are they not just a frequency limiter for either upper or lower? so you have a driver with a fairly flat response from say 500-1500HZ and the passive cross over thats in there now is built for said driver. you replace this driver with one that has a flat response from 50-800HZ and a steep drop off after 800hz. the cross over would be useless at that point as the driver itself is dropping off far before the cross over comes into play. so the sound would be missing in that range of frequencies and it would sound poor. is that right?

how is replacing this tweeter any different from replacing just the tweeter or mid range in a car install? or replacing the factory sub in a car install with an after market sub and keeping it on the same factory amp? we do this all the time at work.

are some of the processors that have dials on them still digital? i am under the impression that digital processors are the ones you configure from a digital head display or computer and the processors with all the dials (like a KQ30) are the old analog POT style. when i search on amazon or newegg what i find are a massive amount of bass processors and 2 channel EQ's. there are a few processors like the PXA H800 that pop up but there is really no middle ground from the 100.00 market to the 800.00 market of processors. the reason i say it goes from low end to over kill is it seems to jump from a couple channel POT EQ/Xover to 8+ channels with 30+ EQ channels, USB inputs, AUX inputs, ect. so im toying with various things i have lying around the house on my day off. i just took out the plastic dome 2" tweeter from one of my floor standing sony speakers and replaced it with a boss bullet tweeter. the sound is so much BRIGHTER and more vibrant. i really love the sound of this bullet.

yes, thats why i bought it