Impious

If I'm reading your post correctly, the only thing you need to replace is the surround. If so, don't pay attention to the people telling you that you need a recone. You don't need a recone, you just need a surround. A recone replaces all of the soft parts.....which you don't need done. Since Focal hasn't gotten back with you I would take 95Honda's advice and check with Zalytron and some of the other home audio based DIY forums to see if anyone has any insights.

I do not know about that driver specifically. My suggestion would be to email PE and ask them directly. They're always very helpful....if they don't carry it, they may direct you to someone who does. As for cost.....I'd imagine it's a lot more expensive to build. There's a lot more steel and a larger magnet in that driver than their other, they may also have more engineering time and more parts tooling into that driver which would increase cost, etc. A 4" driver will not be capable of reproducing midbass at a realistic level. Output is determined by the amount of air the driver is able to displace. A 4" driver simply lacks the necessary cone area to displace a sufficient volume of air to reproduce those frequencies at a realistic level. Most 6" drivers realistically lack the necessary displacement to reproduce the frequencies most people play them at with the output level most people expect out of them. There's no replacement for displacement.

Not sure what you are looking for performance wise, but if you are looking for an excellent sounding driver that is also capable of fair amounts of output, I'd suggest an Exodus Audio Shiva-X2; DIYCable.com : Intro » Home » Exodus Subwoofers » If you are looking for more of a pure SPL driver, then it's probably not for you.

I would believe them to be better drivers.

Parts-Express.com – Tang Band Tang Band - Meniscus Audio Group, Inc. Madisound Store

The SLS on sale at PE are not the same SLS sold by Madisound. Different drivers. That said; The SLS8's sold @ Madisound are some of the better performing affordably priced DIY midbass drivers on the market. I haven't seen any measurements for the RE8's, but I would be very surprised if their performance was equivalent to that of the SLS8. What frequency range were you planning to try to use the drivers? What were you going to be using to actively cross them? How much power?

There are dozens. Really depends on how much you are looking to spend.

It's the first thing I think of everytime I see your screen name

An enclosure (or lack thereof) shapes the low frequency response of any driver; subwoofer, midbass, midrange, tweeters. An enclosure (or lack thereof) will therefore shape the low frequency response of any midbass driver you plan to play at midbass frequencies. How a driver will perform at midbass frequencies without an enclosure is going to depend entirely upon the design of the driver.

There is no precise frequency range. It's not like 59hz is subbass and 60hz is midbass, or 299hz is midbass and 300hz is midrange. It's not that definitive. All you'll end up hearing are opinions as everyone operates with a different definition of midbass. Some people base it on the musical content within each range; I.E. lower male vocals can extend down into the 200hz range, so they set the upper limit for midbass at 200hz. Some people base it on octaves; I.E. the lowest 2 octaves are subbass (20-80hz), the next 2 octaves are mibass (80-320hz). Some people base it on the localization cues; I.E. the frequency range where sound is localized based ITD and/or IID, etc. I personally generally define "midbass" as being approximately (and somewhat arbitrarily) between 60hz and 400hz for the simple reason that this range generally encompasses the bandwidth that most people use "dedicated midbass drivers" due to 1) limitations of their midbass driver's capabilities and 2) limitations of their midrange driver's capabilities. That said; Some people use their dedicated midbass drivers between 50hz and 500hz, others use them between 80hz and 300hz. How you will and should use your midbass drivers just depends on the goals for the system, the limitations of the drivers, how the speakers all integrate together, where they are being located, etc.

IIRC There's been rumblings about Ray's plans to bring back Linear Power for quite a while.

Little benefit to running them both, other than more money in wires, more space taken up and more time installing. The audible difference between 2kw & 1500w is only 1.25db at best, under ideal conditions.....by the time you factor in power compression, the difference is going to be well below the threshold of audibility.

Yes, if you use a separate amp you can just get a variable line-level attenuator to put on the RCA's going to the subwoofer amplifier.

Ok! I set the head unit bass gain to 50%, the channels to 100% rear (those are the outputs to the amp) and played a 100hz test tone. (sine wave) Readings: Xover on center: 10.1 Xover 100%: 22.7 Xover 0%: 3.7 So since the voltage is changing, it's a problem with my input signal? Looks like the crossover is functioning just fine. Based on those voltages, the signal was down -15db @ 100hz when the crossover was set to 50hz, which is -3db more than expected (12db/oct slope) but could be due to inaccuracies in the crossovers (the pot style crossovers on amplifiers are rarely 100% accurate in range from the tests I've seen). So just to clarify, the two problems you are experiencing is weak output from the amplifier and you feel you are getting too much of the higher range of sound out of the subwoofer?

Yes

No. Passive crossovers are designed to be used with a specific impedance. Deviating very far from that impedance will change the crossover points as well as render anything else designed into the passives to be virtually useless.

If he doesn't understand what the actual intended use of the Epicenter is, and was using it outside of it's intended purpose, then it was likely a contributing factor. That said; If he doesn't also understand proper use of things like the gain and bass boost and doesn't know how to identify driver stress then it's a moot point since there are ways beyond an Epicenter to overdrive speakers.

Changing subs may help out but if he doesnt know how to control the epiccenter then it will happen again. The problem wasn't the drivers. The problem was his inability to understand proper use of his equipment. If he doesn't understand why the first pair got damaged, there's little hope for different drivers to survive. Especially if he thinks he's getting something better suited to his abuse, which will probably lead him to abuse them harder......which will probably decrease their potential lifespan. With a 1600w amp and an Epicenter, he will still have the ability to wreak havoc on either a pair of SSD's or SEx's.

Huh? You said you were using a single 5-channel, then listed 2 different amps?

How or why did the subwoofers become damaged? You need to identify the problem first. Considering he has an amplifier capable of thermally overdriving the speakers plus an Epicenter, and both of the drivers went nuclear, I'm going to throw out a guess that the problem was user error. In which case, your cousin needs to learn how to use his equipment rather than try to beef up the speakers to match his idiocy. You would need to discuss with Scott how any changes to the original parts would affect the parameters and performance of the drivers. You can't just start randomly adding things like extra spiders without understanding how that is going to change the subwoofer (or if it would even help, since extra spiders wouldn't help if he was thermally overdriving the subwoofers). If you start changing things, the parameters will very likely shift enough that it will no longer provide the same performance as "stock" SE's had in his current box. And you would need to know what the new parameters would be so that an adequate enclosure could be constructed. Or, the more simple solution.....get the stock recones for the driver and teach him how to properly use his equipment. If he doesn't want it to happen again, he needs to use more sense when using his equipment rather than trying to idiot-proof it for him. It was likely his fault, not the drivers'.

No.

I wouldn't leave them like that long term, but just for quick testing purposes if the spade connectors fit into the openings you will be fine.

Did you do what I asked? It'll take all of 5 minutes and give you a quick idea if the crossover on the amp is functioning or not. Don't buy anything until you can verify that the amplifier is functioning properly.

Actually, nobody here knows that as it's never actually been demonstrated or proven. That's not terrible....that's well below the threshold of audibility. Which means you won't hear a any difference between .5% THD and .000001% THD.

Just an FYI, looks like the specs in the store for the EDX is a little off; SSA Store - Bravox EDX Subwoofer Looks like it's missing Sd, and the numbers for everything from Bl and down is shift up one line.