Impious

IMO there can be, but it depends a lot on the vehicle, your goals and the level of your skill in fabrication.

It will probably be a little louder but also sound SIGNIFICANTLY worse. Are you planning on installing the speakers in the stock locations?

Simple solution is to not purchase speaker wire with transparent insulation, then you'll be blissfully ignorant of this problem Like 95 said, sounds like oxidation. Not a huge concern as long as it's not at the connection points, which it's not as I read twice in your post.

Yes, these are XBL Cool beans I've always enjoyed the XBL gear I've played with. Be interested in seeing the specs on them. Did you go with XBL on the tweeter as well? Not many of those out there.

Two piece top plate.....split gap?

In the hands of someone skilled and knowledgeable in the tuning of an active setup, then the active setup would likely achieve better results. However, in the hands of someone not very skilled and knowledgeable in the tuning of an active setup, chances are good the passive setup would yield better results. Based on your questions, I would gander a guess you are closer to the 2nd category than the 1st. That's not to say you can't learn, but IMO you should do things like focus on optimizing your installation and spend some time reading and learning before you spend money a processor and setting the system up in such a way that there is a step tuning requirement which may be over your head. That can quickly lead to getting burned out on the system because you're running in circles trying to figure out why you can never get it to sound right. What is your plan for the installation of the comp set? What sound deadening have you completed or will be completing?

Don't believe it comes with glue. Generally CA glue (with accelerator) is used, should be able to find some at a hobby shop. Some people also use high strength epoxy. But I honestly don't know enough about adhesives to tell you if one is better than the other, beside epoxy being much easier to come by.

Aaaaannnnndddd this is a more typical craigslist add for my area http://fortwayne.craigslist.org/ele/3274968425.html

http://fortwayne.craigslist.org/ele/3276461602.html Would be a pretty cool old school lot if the equipment wasn't beat to hell.

The research that indicates you design your enclosure based on desired response rather than the amount of power on tap. This is where you are running into problems. You keep asking for X enclosure based on Y power, when the proper way to design an enclosure is X enclosure based on your desired response. If someone is telling you to design the enclosure based on the rated power of the amplifier, then they aren't very good at enclosure design. And, for reference, when M5 referenced properly adjusting the gain it had absolutely nothing at all to do with owning and/or using a DD-1 to set the gain as that does absolutely nothing to confirm your gains are set properly. Meaning, if you feel you may be in a position of overpowering the drivers in your intended enclosure....turn the gain down.

It's not hard to build a 1500w amplifier and put a 1kw label on it.......

It would help if you could tell us what you like and dislike about the W3 and why you are looking to change? What are you trying to improve? Based on your list there I'm presuming budget is around $200, give or take?

And the important difference is that SPL competitors worry about what a meter says whereas the average daily user is concerned with the resultant sound. The main issue is SPL competitors trying to convert all of their experiences from the lanes on a meter and applying it to every daily system when the overall goals are completely different. A 1db difference in the lanes is a big deal, in a daily system it's literally not going to matter one damn bit. As a result the things an SPL competitor did to gain that 1db may not be applicable or advisable to a daily user. Daily systems can do things like sacrifice some overall system efficiency to gain low end efficiency or an improved response curve or system damping whereas that might not be acceptable to an SPL competitor because "it hurt their score". When there's a meter involved, either burp or averaging, there are going to be compromises made in that system to improve the score on a meter which is not necessarily going to be relevant to a system focused on sound rather than score. Prime examples are the three issues you mentioned above...the first two have no reason to even enter the mind of a person designing a daily driver system as they won't matter in the slightest, and if someone with a daily system is designing their enclosure for efficiency rather than response then they are designing it wrong. I'm not saying there is no overlap between the two, there's bound to be some as we're dealing with the same physics.....but there are different goals and focuses, and the means to those ends are not necessarily going to carry over from one area of focus to another. IMO SPL competitors tend to end up with tunnel vision and view everything in terms of how it scored on a meter when that's not the focus of 95% of the audio market.

Competitors operate under a unique set of circumstances. For the normal everyday user, such as the OP, what a burp competitor experiences and focuses on is completely and utterly useless. For a daily system, it will always be better to focus on maximizing displacement and proper enclosure design before even considering increasing power. Scott Owens was the first to break 180db with thirteen 12's, so i would raise issue with the premise that least cone area is best for burping. I would gander a guess the issue you raise with cone area and SPL has significantly more to do with the last issue you mention than the 1st two, maximizing cone area while also maximizing enclosure efficiency is a balancing act......which is again only significant when we narrow our focus to that of a burp SPL competitor....which has absolutely no bearing on the daily user. I'll add that it is possible for a daily user to have more cone area than their space allows, but that has more to do with appropriate enclosure design in general and not the efficiency aspect that SPL competitors focus on. When I mentioned "efficiency" earlier it was not in regards to subwoofer enclosure efficiency........adding a 2nd subwoofer (where airspace allows) even if we keep power the same is a 3db increase, you double amplifier power on the same sub setup and you'll gain somewhere less than 3db - after power compression - (that's after not only spending $$ to upgrading the amplifier but also more than likely the electrical system, wiring, etc), which is the more efficient upgrade for a daily listener from an acoustic and money/time spent perspective ?

10*Log(Power1/Power2) = Power Difference (in db) So in your case, the difference between 1500w & 1kw is 10*Log(1500/1000) = 1.76db This is the maximum theoretical difference in output. It does not account for real world factors which will only decrease the difference to something less than that predicted by the formula. For example power compression (<--explained in the link), the ability of your electrical system to support the larger amplifier, etc etc. For power compression, when you're already at 500w on a driver rated for 750w or so, expecting atleast 1db of power compression is not unreasonable and is likely pretty conservative which would make the actual difference less than 1db. Audibility wise less than 1db especially in the subbass is not going to be audible. Between 1db and 3db it's possible for the difference to be audible depending on circumstances surrounding the listening session but it's not going to be a dramatic difference, in most cases the difference is not worth the cost of the larger amplifier especially if further electrical upgrades are necessary. Beyond 3db (actual acoustic difference, not theoretical difference) it's going to be up to the individual user at what point the cost of the added equipment is worth the difference in acoustic output. It makes more sense to improve your enclosure and maximize your displacement potential long before you ever think about amplifiers. Increasing amplifier power is the least effective and least efficient method of increasing output with the lowest cost/benefit ratio, especially when you already in the 1kw range because to increase power enough to make an audible difference you would then also need to upgrade the electrical system to support the increased amplifier power which only costs more money and time. But yes, it can be slightly more "effective" to upgrade power with multiple subs as opposed to a single driver because the power is distributed among multiple motors which could potentially mean that power compression is lower. However, increasing amplifier power to reach the goal of increasing audible output is and always should be the absolute last factor considered, and more times than not it isn't going to be a worthwhile "upgrade".

So I ended up tightening it back up. Another issue though on the Zaph page it has a crossover component list and the crossover schematic has 2 resistors that aren't on the list. Are they not needed? I do have a .1 resistor (that I was going to series with a 3.9 to make the 4.0) but I defitiely don't have the .75. The red resistors aren't actually resistors.....it's the resistance of the inductor itself. In this case, R8 is the resistance of L7 and R2 is the resistance of L1.

Same here. My wife's a pill popper though. Funny as we'll end up with the same cold, mine's gone in 2days without meds while hers lasts a week or better. I always assume it's because I've allowed my immune system to strengthen by not taking meds while hers is weak as shit from constantly taking one thing or anything, but I don't have any medical backing to support that hypothesis.

Truck's got a few miles on it......

Output wise you'd be looking at a maximum difference of 1.8db, that's before power compression so reasonably expect the difference to be somewhere less than 1db which is not going to be audible.

Haven't missed that this week. Not looking forward to going back on Monday

Plus if there's no phone # there's one less method for them to reach us at in the future. I'm not a scammer & would never sell something that was not exactly in the condition described.....but I don't want whoever bought it to end up breaking it some how & then blow up my phone trying to blame it on me wanting their $$ back because they fucked up. Email only.

<----- This guy. Email only. Ever. Hell, I can count the number of people who have my cell phone # without having to take off my socks. I keep that shit on the DL. My wife posted a car for sale one time & put our home ph # in the ad. Some fuck called us at 11pm one day then 1am the following night. I think it was a nigerian scammer as the ph # wasn't local & the guy on the message was obviously foreign. But regardless, I chewed her ass for it.

I would check them all.

Apparently that car runs on stupidity since they covered the fuel fill door.

Check your fuses, make sure you didn't pop one when you were hooking/unhooking the battery.