George

do not, i repeat, do not run them in 4 or 5 cubes a piece. my buddy and i have ran them in 5.5 and 6 cubes a piece off 1.25kw and 1.5kw respectively. the low end left something to be desired, by a wide margin. with 8 cubes, i would DEFINITELY pick up a pair of 15's. a pair of 15's in a good box will outshine a pair of 18's in a bad constrictive box.

i do have a question though. you mentioned the port bends along the back wall. did you measure the length of the port down the middle or did you build it with a total of 33" of inside port wall? I measured down the middle of the port. I even drew a line on the box down the middle of the port before gluing and measured that line. The line is actually 31 3/4 in. because according to JLs tuturial I'm supposed to add half the width of the port if the port is running along one of the walls of the box. So, my port length is either 33 in or 31 3/4 in. I believe JL so, I say 33 in. As far as port noise go, my first box was 2.6 cubic ft and has a 1 3/4 in x 11 1/2 in port. I can't hear port noise while I'm driving and didn't know it existed until I decided to take a few videos on my digital camera. So, at least for my car, port noise only happens when you pop the trunk and watch the sub play, but not when I'm driving. Thanks for all the support, and hopefully this damn rain stops so I can finish building. i see this mistake all the time. your actually suppose to subtract half the port from the LV (port length) to get PLV (physical port length). adding physical port length to the port will effectivly lower your tuning even more. the point is you're suppose to try and shorten the port because the air is going to use part of that wall as the port, so you take away half the port width, so that your subwoofer still "see's" example: 2^3ft @ 32 hz with a 4x10" port means you need about 47" of port length that the SUB will actually see. so the physical port length, ie, the length that YOU see, needs to be 45". adding half the width would make the port take up more volume, and lower your net box volume as well. this would make your tuning drop (not by much in this example. only looking at close to .3hz,and would still put you close to the 31-32hz your were aiming for, and cause NO audible distinction). but it can add up little by little when you start making huge ports that add 3.5-4" to the port length. i have no idea why JL states that, but i have a feeling they are saying the same thing just in a different way and it confuses people. then again they use a different equation as well. i use winisd (which claims to calculate end correction, but it seems to match equations that only calculate LV) and this forumla (depending on if i actually want to caluclate it out by hand, or use winisd to get me there)

agreed. try the 20 ohm setting and dont read as close to the cone as possible. shaking hands have caused me to get bouncing ohm readings. put the leads in the the terminals, and fasten them in (whether it be a push terminal or some other form) and then leave them alone. your reading should stay still. it might jump .1 back and forth but thats the dmm's margin of error, if you will, and i wouldnt worry about it

kicker kx2500.1 you could have gotten them for as cheap as $375 plus shipping on ca.com a week ago. they put out, on average, about 2.6-2.8k. mine does 2.96

yea your right. they wont use just a btl recone. they can make it work though.

there is a flagging feature in the upper right hand corner. i suggest you use it. TOS for craigs list states that ad falls underneath the bolded print...

had some broken tinsel leads on a btl. no warranty on these subs, im the 3rd owner, sub was even reconed by someone else before i bought it, and damage had all evidence that looked like user error on my part (which wasnt but i can guarantee you kicker, RF, eclipse etc would use this to save on warranty costs etc) and yet Scott STILL sent me 4 brand new tinsels for the BTL. no cost to me, no shipping cost....nothing. Scott gives a **** about his customers :fyi: -George ps scott and the fi crew: ive told everyone that i know that is into car audio about you. and i have bought 2 18's bl's and have gotten my buddy to buy 2 as well. i have no intention of straying from Fi products, and CS is top notch

ok heres a little update. the first set of tinsels was lost in the mail. im assuming because of the fires in the SD area. scott sent me another set for free, and they arrived today. the ****ing guy included 2 big ass free stickers too. WTF? he sent 2 sets of tinsels out of his own pocket, asked for no money for the product or shipping AND threw in 2 stickers. you wont find that from any other company...i guarantee it

The 8" difference is correct. . . .The back panel butts to each side, the front panel butts up to the port, but overlaps the side for the .75" difference. Brian whoops. thats not how i build my boxes so i completely over looked the over lap on the right hand side lol.

i agree. i dont like that site. id rather do it by hand or use winisd (its close enough). at fist i started thinking "well its 29.5 because the port width is probably 6" ", but sure enough its 8.75" which means the port length is wrong. edit: that is weird though. just a quick check in winisd shows that the port length is right (well close enough) @ 32.33" (we'll use 32.25"). your physical port length (actual length of the port with end correction would be 27.875"). i tihnk their cut sheet tool is no good though. port width should be 8.75, but the difference between the front and back pieces is only 8". this will effect your port area, which in turn will affect your port length and box volume.

use a dmm to set your gain using a -6db 50hz test tone. your gain is there to match your preouts on the HU. you dont just set it to 1/2 and expect it to be right for every HU. hell you could use volume 5/35 and have your gain set to 99%. in the same instance setting your gain at volume 30/35 might results in gains at 25%. there is no, and never will be a standard setting.

lol, whats up. thanks Scott i got the email. Fi CS once again shines through!

the thread is much more developed here http://www.caraudio.com/forum/showthread.php?t=265327 but i will post here anyways, since i would like to get an idea of what some new tinsel will cost me so i can try to do a repair. so my btl stopped working today when i was listening to it on volume 35/70 on the highway. i thought maybe my wires came loose. get home, pull out the woofer and this is what i see at first glance i thought i clipped it. i take a look at the coil...its fine. never smelled anything either and everything is in the same condition as when i recieved the sub. and the other tinsels dont look burned to me at all. i am the third owner of the sub. it does look a bit burned but the coil looks perfect so who knows. upon closer inspection it looks like that single tinsel was a good bit shorter than the other 3 which seem to have enough play to move freely. this leads me to believe that the tinsel slap issue i thought i was having was that tinsel being tugged on. the sub does not bottom out in the enclosure, and i have my subsonic filter set. it was in a box that was roughly 4.3 or so cubes at 31-32 hz (after recalculating and seeing an error i made in the original calculation. and was being run off a kx2500 pretty conservativly. well, ill talk to FI and see if there is a way to fix this issue without having to do a complete recone. RIP BTL, after like only 1 week of owning the sub (well its seen 4kw from the first owner and 1.7kw from the last owner so it got some use lol but it went out as soon as it hit me )

checked. still no tinsels. asked all the family members, and no sight of anything for me. scott, i would like it if you could send it to a different address. i had a replacement debit card sent to this address, a week back or so, and it too was lost in the mail. i will e-mail you with another address, and you can make a decision on which one you want to send it to. btw, i would prefer you didnt spend the cash to send it next day. just good old standard ground is good enough for me. youve helped enough, considering this is none of your responsibility anyways.

haha so i was right! i was assuming you were going to send by USPS. but when nothing showed up, i started to think "well i know they use UPS to ship the subs, so ill keep a look out for the truck" lol ok well, ill check to see if they show up today. remember we had the fires down here in san diego, so our mail was stopped for a little bit. but its been running normally for quite some time already. im starting to suspect, they just lost it it was sent to the 6100 Blain Place address right? should i email you with the address again, or do you still have it on file? thanks George

still no tinsels im only 360 miles away from vegas too. damn you ups!

have you seen the OP's hair trick? doubt hes going to accomplish anything similar off 1 18. you need excursion for that and lots of it. you gotta get that air going in that cabin. there is only so much you can do with the 18 trying to pull a hair trick. once you reach xmax, your done. the 4 15's will move more air. sure that guy hit 154 (who knows what mic though), but off how much power? and at what note? he could be near tuning for all we know, and not getting much excursion. sure 154 sounds good, but it doesn't guarantee any hair trick, especially at 50+hz

1 18" btl has the same cone area as 1.5 15" btls. i would say your at a HUGE disadvantage in cone area, so i dont see a single 18" btl pulling off a hair trick or getting as loud. i would stick with the q's

a lot of people also talk out of their ass lol.i trust Loyd Lowry (bigbassman) and djman37 (off ca.com) in their testing over most. and this is a direct quote from djman37 both are members i would trust over most.

yea, thats really the only reason i dont like aero ports. the price is bad. but i usually base my recommendations on what i see the person using. i mean 2 18" btl's and 3kw a piece and the electrical to back it up to me, means you got a little bit of change, so aeros would be the least of your worries lol. i prefer slots because they are cheap and im usually never constricted on space anyways

double post

steve much like me, lives in california....shooting someone trying to steal your property gets you prison time...

i would keep the aero ports in mind man. by most tests done by members, you can get by with 50% of the port area you want, by using aero ports over slot ports. 3 6" ports are equal to 84^2in which is equal to about 168^2in of a slot port. 4 6" ports are equal to 112^2in which is equal to about 224^2in of a slot port. this will allow you to give those drivers as much room as possible while still giving adequate port area because your gaining volume but minimizing port area, while not sacrificing performance. a 35hz tuning will work fine with these subs. my 15" btl at 33hz gets lower and louder than my buddies 15" XXX 15" at 29hz. and its a widley known fact that the xxx is a low end monster.

love it! thanks man

not sure if you guys are just extremely busy and not being able to get to the emails but i would like to purchase 4 replacement btl leads for a 15" btl. i sent 2 emails titles "ATTN SCOTT HELP ASAP" like you told the other guys to do that wanted to buy some btl leads. it has all my info in there, including address, sub model and options on it, my email adress, and my phone number, as well as what im inquiring about, which is the btl leads. just not sure if you guys recieved it. thanks George